FILL: Fun with English from the Bus in China

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 8 December 2008

These caught my eye. On an electronic banner display in the front of the airport bus . . .

All the way and before completely stopped, please keep sitting in the seats.

Please get yourself well seated before the bus gets started.

The funny part of both of these is that they are perfectly clear, just not the way a native language speaker would phrase them. So what do they mean, how would you phrase them, and what's wrong with the way these are phrased?

TECH: More tropes and plots than you can throw a cat at!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 10 December 2008

Just be forewarned. This site can chew up much time. Especially when you're on deadline for something in the boring non-fiction world . . .

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

(who, me? No, I'm writing the chapter for the book. Really. Focused! Yep, that's me. Shiny! :-)

[Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to go to http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceNovelPlots and pick a plot, any plot -- then twist and turn it into something wonderful! and write, write, write!]

FILL: A muse

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 11 December 2008

Just a quick quirky thought.

I was contemplating that description of writing -- the one that goes "put your character in a tree, throw rocks at him, and then get him down out of the tree?" (hum? Can't find a source, but there's a version of it at http://paulgorman.org/cheatsheets/fiction_plots.shtml and various other places -- one attributes it to "some wise old scribe")

Anyway, it struck me that the final phrase is poorly phrased. See, as a writer, that last phrase really should be "then show him getting himself out of the tree." It's important that the protagonist be the person taking the action in the end, not having it imposed on him -- by the author, narrator, Momma nature, or whatever. That's one of the ways to have the story dribble away in sadness -- just make the protagonist a puppet being played by the ending, rather than an active part of it.

So -- get your hero in a tree? That can be imposed, and fairly often is. Throw rocks at him? Again, external sources of those flying shards of fate are perfectly adequate. But the grande finale comes when the hero gets himself out of the tree -- by flying into the sunset, jumping to a broken leg, slithering through the branches, or some other amazing method, but the hero does it himself.

Watcha think?

Okay?
Write!

And spin, and kick, and step, two, three, four . . .