Anyone else writing a novel?

Most writers are notoriously bad (myself included)

Here: http://storywrite.com/story/7816889-Arthouse_Kicks-by-Profesh

Tee-hee. (Couldn't help it, sorry.)

Here: http://storywrite.com/story/7816889-Arthouse_Kicks-by-Profesh

Twisting my words? Mature.

Anyway, having read your story, you have no right to criticize anyone else's stories. Is it intended as a joke, or do you really think you sound intelligent and that those words actually add to your stories?

My God, looks like someone needs to listen to Orwell:

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

Numbers two and four will be of particular help to you in writing something that is enjoyable to read, rather than what seems to be some sort of display of vocabulary knowledge. Characters are more important than unusual synonyms...

All at once he found himself contemplating a narrow-chested man with a shock of grey hair and glasses which magnified his eyes so that they filled the lenses up to their gold rims, when the central door opened, and a dark figure stole forth, closing the door behind him quietly, and with an air of the deepest dejection. [He] watched him turn his eyes to the shock-headed man, who inclined his body forward clasping his hands behind him. No notice was taken of this by the other, who began to pace up and down the landing, his dark cloak clasped around him and trailing on the floor at his heels. Each time he passed the doctor, for such it was, that gentleman inclined his body, but as before there was no response, until suddenly, stopping immediately before the physician in attendance, he drew from his cape a slender rod of silver mounted at the end with a rough globe of black jade that burned around the edges with emerald fire. With this unusual weapon the mournful figure beat sadly at the doctor's chest as though to inquire whether there was anyone at home.

The doctor coughed. The silver and jade implement was pointed at the floor, and [he] was amazed to see the doctor, after hitching his exquisitely creased trousers to a few inches above his ankle, squat down. His great vague eyes swam about beneath the magnifying lenses like a pair of jellyfish seen through a fathom of water. His dark grey hair was brushed out over his eyes like thatch. For all the indignity of his position it was with a great sense of style that he became seated following with his eyes the gentleman who had begun to walk around him slowly.

[...]

[T]he main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

It was an off-hand remark made in a spirit of ironic jest. Perhaps you aren't yet mature enough to appreciate irreverent humour, or perhaps your still-budding literary temperament has made you overly sensitive to any semblance of criticism (however oblique).

Which words? I think there are several clever lines, yes; and while I'd be first to admit that my sporadic exertions will never be geared for general consumption, nor do I labour under the sad misapprehension that such idiosyncratic forays could somehow be primed to inspire future generations or revolutionise Western thought: a few people love my style, several people loathe it, but hey – at least I have one. And it isn't J. K. Rowling's, or Anthony Horowitz's, or Malorie Blackman's, or Eoin Colfer's, or Philip Pulman's [I wish!], or J. R. R. Tolkien's, or Brian Jacques', or that of any other author on whom you've subconsciously modelled yourself.

Any of the words you've clearly used in an attempt to make yourself seem clever, but have just made you look like someone trying to hard

and letting your characterisation and the development of the plot suffer at the expense of your desperation to use words that, you seem to believe, make you look clever.

When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally.

I'm still tempted to say you're trolling, because I struggle to believe that anyone who writes as you do could possibly criticize others and their writing. And if the modelling is subconscious, how do you know that your style isn't modelled on someone, yet you just don't realize it.

Do you hope to be published?

His Dark Materials would be a prime example of the genre.

I started drafting ideas for a novel called 'The Propagandist' based around the Russian Revolution and an unemployed 17 year-old who is offered a job as a propagandist for Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He becomes infamous and eventually gets to meet Lenin himself - but it comes at a cost as his family are brutally attacked by supporters of the old regime.
I stopped around half way through the first chapter because I didn't know if it was going to work - I began writing it having studied Russia for AS History but think that people may get a little confused when reading it What do you guys think?

It's abstruse for the wrong reason though. There is an obvious chasm between sentences being convoluted and almost forcefully complex, and a sentence which is ambiguous with many interesting connotations. Your diction is plain enough in its meaning, but very complicated on the surface, which gives the impression of pretentiousness for its own sake. I mean, using words like "post-libation" just made me cringe a little to be honest.


My advice wasn't to go through your novel and start replacing words! But, for example, take a look at this sentence in particular:


"Memories percolated from his subconscious and the erstwhile hegemony of his libido - now sated - swiftly gave way to an insurgent conscience, subdued mercifully in its turn by the increasingly strident chorus of a burgeoning hangover."


You've said so little, but used the most ridiculous sentence to say it. All I really meant from my post was that, in my opinion, a great novel is not one which has the most impressive vocabulary, but one which has the most impressive ideas. I do agree that you can't take those five tips from Orwell too literally, as he himself has broken them many times. However, I think you're at the opposite extreme of a couple of those rules.

Firstly, I'd like to ask, why have you come into a thread designed for inspiration and for writers to share ideas, purely to start an argument and tell others that their ideas aren't very good? It's clearly a desperate attempt to make yourself look clever when, in actual fact, your own writing is appalling.

Your attempts at making people feel inferior to you because of your ridiculous lexical choice are pathetic. I never said you were breaking Orwell's rules, that was another poster, but I'd rather read something with the phrase "shaking like a leaf" in it than with the ridiculous choice of words you use. You seem to be using writing as a vehicle to show your perceived intelligence and lexical dexterity, rather than to create characters and plot.

Your writing isn't a novel or a story, it is a string of words. You have no right to criticize the stories or ideas of others in the way you did when your own is of such a poor quality.

You haven't read an excerpt of my story, and as I said, writers are notoriously bad at describing their own stories. James Patterson's series about a group of mutant children - mine has elements of his in there, but isn't actually based on his, and I'd rather have a story based on elements of a highly successful series than write a piece that is abysmal because all I can think about is how desperate I am for it not to sound like anything else any other author has written

No, I don't write to be published. I write to improve my writing skills and because I enjoy it, because it is something that interests me and I like being able to write out the scenes I imagine in my head. The feeling of satisfaction when you complete a chapter you are proud of, and writing characters you can identify with, as well as having others tell you that they are hooked and can't wait for the next chapter of your story, is a great feeling.

I don't care whether or not you find my prose enjoyable (or even intelligible, since you're basically a child), although I can assure you that others do and that several of those others are significantly more widely-read than you are.