Visual Thesaurus

This evening, while writing a pretty passage about gold atoms in an eternity band ending up at near infinite distances from one another at the end of time, I was searching for an appropriate synonym of the ordinary(!) word 'plain'. I discovered something I thought might excite Nick. Of course, he's probably already seen it, but if not, you'll have spotted it to the left of this text!

Visit the Visual Thesaurus!

Flash Fiction III

Being a story, in under one hundred words (including this introduction), which contains the requisite Beginning, Middle and End.

A Beginning: She woke up and stretched luxuriously.

A Middle: A chase. In the end and after many trials, he successfully wooed her. She initially accepted his advances with caution; she never forgot the tan line on his finger.

An End: It was a dream. She woke up, and from behind the cabinet beside her bed a figure emerged. It was her husband.
'I was looking for my ring,' he said.
She wondered why he had taken it off.

Long Form Journalism

Today I want to highlight a couple of interesting examples of long-form journalism. The internet has made it a lot easier to find this kind of writing. Before you would probably have been limited to the stories appearing in the papers and magazines you usually bought.

The first is a story from the New Yorker about Caster Semenya, the South Africa athlete. The piece touches on some very interesting territory: Exploitation of celebrities for political capitalism, post-colonial politics, what the real difference is between male and female, the politics of sport, and the possible routes out of poverty.

The second is an article from the Guardian about the drug gangs and the favelas they control in Rio. It's amazing to read about how the city is basically a loose agglomeration of independent states, each with their own standing armies and legal systems. Even the state police (military in this case) are in on the deal, controlling territories in the form of militias. Welcome to the future, it's looking pretty grim.

Intra-links- A long-form article on zombies.

Choose Your Own Adventure

I believe that every boy who grew up in the '80s was obsessed with Choose Your Own Adventure books. If they weren't, I was certainly obsessed enough for all of us.
This site is a brilliant analysis of the way that these books worked, and includes some really quite beautiful diagrams of the paths that the various narrative threads took through the story-space formed by the pages. Obviously, kids have computer games to fill their interactive narrative needs these days, but there are very few games which offer such comprehensively branching stories. Mostly, what seems like a non-linear adventure is really a main linear story with optional side-routes. It's hard to see that changing; content costs money, and if you create 10 different endings for a story, most people are going to only see 10% of that content. Unfortunately (economically at least) we don't live in a universe where people are prepared to pay for potential entertainment, and most games are too long for people to keep on playing until they've seen it all.

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword: Part Deux

Dear Reader,

Further to our prior communication on the subject of good writing, and what that might look like if you were capable of producing it, I wish to add this addendum. I feel that the content could especially benefit you in overcoming your unique difficulties.

Yours Truly

Nick James

Writing Elizabeth Taylor with Chips

Three Things:

Elizabeth Taylor

This lovely much misunderstood(!) star of such classics as A Place in the Sun (An American Tragedy) (1951) (pictured) had some early wisdom in love, even if it did betray the naive romanticism that eventually did for her.

At the age of 14 she had about 20 pet chipmunks, all called Nibbles (they were interchangeable, like men). In order to be completely sure that Nibbles loved her, she took him to the edge of a forest and set him down upon the ground. Nibbles tentatively hopped towards the line of trees before turning around and gazing back with big, sad eyes. Suddenly, filled with adoration for his pretty little girl, he dashed back and leapt into her arms. This became the foundation of her later approach to relationships: set the man free and offer him escape back into the world, away from her, and see if he comes back. From then on, at the critical point, she always tested her lovers, turning them away and giving them only one chance to run back to her arms.

I said she had wisdom. What do you think? Love on terms of freedom only?


Chips (Fries)

(As in, little stubs of potato, fried)

I just made the most delicious chips imaginable. The secret is to cover the bastards in cheap vegetable oil and then hit them with maximum heat in the oven. Oh baby.


Writing

Nick mentioned writing tips a couple of posts down. Very useful stuff. Can't really agree with the celebration of Vonnegut though. I've read Ice Nine and Slaughterhouse 5 now and neither struck me as totally brilliant, though I appreciate them both in many ways. My problem is the smugness of the guy. He's so proud of his short, punchy little sentences.

Even my creative writing tutor (oh yes, every Monday night for 3 hours in North London - at least he's a successful author - Andrew Taylor) thinks Vonnegut is a model of writing style. I made the same objections to him and he more or less ignored me. Mind you, I think he appreciated the contribution since no one else in a class of 14 had read any of his stuff, or Chekhov's, or Dostoyevsky's... Who are these people?

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

I suspect that many readers (and writers) of this blog would prefer to make their living by the pen. By this I mean that instead of using their pens to write about meetings and finance data, they would prefer to use them to write stories about meetings and finance data. I therefore present some useful writing aids and tips.

1. If you are willing to make the effort to move your eyes 3 inches to the left, you will see a picture. This picture illustrates but 4 of 42 third-act twists to spice up any story about corporate minutia. Or zombies.

2. If your tastes run more to the non-fictional, here's some useful advice from real life, non-fiction author (he both writes non-fiction, and is a bona fide author), Bryan Caplan.

3. Finally, my personal favourite, the late, lamented Kurt Vonnegut's style guide. That should really need no introduction.

Literature

Following on from my Brief Slice of Emo the other day, it turns out I'm not the only one to have such thoughts (surprising eh?). I'm reading a biography of Sheilah Graham, a Hollywood gossip columnist from the 1950s and the last lover of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She discovers poetry with him and he says:

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You can discover that your
longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from
anyone. You belong.