I believe your post reiterated what I said in post 24, at least I choose to look at it that way. I am not saying that a program will write your story, only that it can take care of a lot of the grammar and mechanics behind it, even to the point of illustrating minor differences in how sentence fragments are generally interpreted. In another thread someone asked about using the word peek, and what was brought out was how the masculinity aspect of the two examples given would appear. In a program that would be a possible set of options by simply drawing on a database of sentences, phrases, etc., possibly an empirical collection, and showing how they are generally understood, and letting the author choose or simply use their own specific wording. Not sure what a real writer is, but I am certainly not a published author, and certainly not skilled enough to be one. To me a good story has an interesting plot, however it seems that what shade of purple prose is used is more important. I understand that how you word a story is the most important aspect, however I still see this as the mechanics of writing.
Presentation. Excellent writing can salvage an uninspired plot, and crappy writing can ruin a potentially brilliant piece of work. The inverse is not true, in my experience.
Purple prose is always bad. And I see nothing fundamentally wrong with your writing. You seem to be declaring defeat and passing responsibility to a theoretical computer program, when as far as I can tell you're perfectly capable of getting to the necessary level of writing skill.
Possibly an example of this for me is the novel "The Shipping News", I thought it was a boring book to read, but I did like the movie. So the movie was sort of a graphic rewriting of the story which was far more interesting than the original work, IMO. Sorry, purple prose is obviously the wrong term to use, but I don't know what else to call it at this time. I come from a more technical/engineering background where telling is more important than showing in writing, where getting to the point as clearly without room for interpretation as you can is most important. So a writing realignment is needed for me it seems.
While a fiction writer is probably never going to be as unambiguous as a technical manual, I tend to prefer writers whose prose is clean and clear, rather than those who add a lot of trimmings, even non-purple, tasteful trimmings. When I really like someone's writing (though in this case it tends to be nonfiction writing) I fairly often find that they spent time as a journalist, and I like that minimalist style, where the extra meaning often seems to come from eliminating, rather than adding, words. The last word standing, after all, is obviously the most important one. So finding your writing voice may not be about adding decoration, but about making the most of a lack of verbal clutter. And, of course, about finding what's important. Coming from a technical writing background, your first impulse may be to, say, describe the layout of a room, while the real message may be how its musty smell reminds the character of her piano teacher's house from childhood, the piano teacher on whom she had her first crush. But you may still be able to communicate that message in a clean, dry, gingerbread-free voice.
Interestingly I mean both interpretation and misinterpretation, at least in my view point. Sort of like the words flammable and inflammable meaning essentially the same thing. When writing instructions you don't want them misinterpreted but you also want them to be taken verbatim. As an example where I used to work the equipment manufacturers specified a ten bit field to be used for referencing a specific group in a list, however the reference was really a two part key and that was interpreted differently by different vendors, that is which portion of the bits were which part of the key. But you're correct for this situation and I worded that poorly.
As far as computers go, I suspect they would write about as well as they speak. We've all heard "computer voices" that have no real emphasis, no life. They-just-say-the-words-like-that-and-then-come-to-a-full-stop. The meaning comes across clearly, but it would be pretty awful if everybody spoke like that. I reckon computer writing would be much the same. Comprehensible, but not compelling. There would be no emotion, no human voice to engage your memory or your heart.
Sorry if my remark came across in any way offensive, it was intended as a joke. I left room for interpretation, which means that you may have misinterpreted it. However, I don't agree that interpret and misinterpret are more or less interchangeable. Interpretation is quite important in art. I've got three different versions of one particular piece of music, each with its own interpretation. But in things like a technical manual, or a legal document or a computer program, it's vital that the way it is read is the same as the way that it was written.
I overstated what I said about an AI computer writing for you, I meant more along the lines of a dictionary or thesaurus type usage. I think a program might help you keep a character in character, along with the grammatical checking, etc. It would still be up to the author to create the story but some of the editing and revising might be enhanced, options to sentence structure or even phrases used. Shadowfax's comment about my use of interpretation is a good example, the ambiguity of my usage could be pointed out by a program. However great writing will still require a great author or maybe extreme luck. (infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of keyboards over an infinite amount of time ...)
Fair enough, but I can't imagine wanting to turn my writing over to a computer for editing and revising! I always turn off the spellchecker because it can't differentiate between a misspelled word and one it hasn't heard of before, or a word that is spelled correctly but means something different. People who confuse there and their get bypassed by spellcheckers all the time. I can just imagine it messing around with all my word choices it doesn't like? Yeegs.... Okay, maybe computers could be designed to be more sophisticated in the future. But I don't think an artist wants to tell a computer 'now draw me a house.' They might get a house, even an elaborate house ...but it won't be their own artwork, will it? I feel the same about my writing. I write because it's my story that I want to tell. I don't want a computer doing it for me.
Your example of there and their was something that my forty year old program would pick out for me, I expected a much more advanced program to be available by now. Peachalulu told me to read my story out loud to help pick up errors which really does work, but unfortunately those there/their/they're issues pass that test along with all the homonyms. No one wants a program to write their story but it could help with the tedium of rereading your 100k word novel for the umpteenth time. There is another thread about trying not to use some overused words, I think you have a sticky above your PC with a couple yourself. Things like that can be easily reviewed by a program. On the other hand one other thing that would really concern me about a program is its access to the Internet, I would never feel safe about my masterpiece not being sent up to the cloud unless you could turn off that capability securely/absolutely. My old Grammatik IV predated the Internet so no issue back then.
I have to disagree with "easily". The vast majority of "errors" pointed out by my grammar checker aren't errors, but the grammar checker not understanding my writing. I'd actually be surprised for it to determine correctly, from context, whether I should be using their or there. I'd certainly be amazed if that capability were working forty years ago. (1974?! I very much doubt it.) Language is incredibly complicated. I don't see any significant progress in computer programs' understanding of it.
You seem to be correct about the forty years ago, I found a link to the software and it runs on DOS, released back in 1989, still predated the Internet. Seemed like forty years ago sorry about that. It would pick up errors such as their and there being misused. The link winworldpc.com/product/grammatik/iv says it is built into Word Perfect, I don't have that so I don't know how well it works. Anyway if something existed that was really good someone here would know about it, so it is all a moot point.
Yes, computers are very helpful when writing. However, there is a difference between a computer finding over-used words you've asked them to look for (saving lots of time) and a computer deciding—for you—that one word is better than another. I myself would never have become a writer if it hadn't been for computers. They make writing and storing a lot easier, simply because they allow you to make changes easily. Using a wordprocessor means you don't need to handwrite or type your whole MS over again every time you discover something you want to change. Where you and I part company is over the issue of a computer DECIDING things for you. Saying 'I can't write as well as I'd like,' and handing your MS over to the computer to decide what works and what doesn't? Or 'I get bored editing, so I'll let the computer do it for me.' That's like doing an outline drawing and handing it over for somebody else to color it in. Unless you do the whole thing yourself, it's not your work. I'm sure that some programmer genius out there will eventually create a programme that allows you to feed in a few story ideas, push the button, and you'll get a novel written without any effort on your part, but I don't look forward to reading what the computer produces.
I have issues with these too. And for some reason I have a habit of writing the wrong word. I'll write how when I mean who, and fast when I meant slow and it can get odder than/then? that as I have a habit of making up words - like resplendid. I use Word Perfect and it has a program called Grammatik which I've turned on mainly for spelling. My spelling was atrocious - but I don't use Spellcheck to correct it I force myself to respell it and if all else fails look up the word. I can't even begin to tell you how much my spelling has improved. But Grammatik doesn't pick up on weird words or incoherent sentences - a lot of grammar programs are flawed that way. Worse you can write a perfectly wonderful sentence and it will harass you to correct it. But I have to admit Pro writing aid is good if you want to check for word echos, or adverbs or such. I usually keep one of my fave grammar books nearby to double check to see if I've got the right meaning - their, they're or there. It's an ongoing learning experience for me, though as I still have to make a conscious effort to correct - it's vs its. But I read something that was encouraging - if you read up on any subject one hour every day for seven years you'll be an expert. It sounds like a long road but imagine if you only half that, you might not be an expert but you'll be good. P.s. There was actually a funny sci fi novel put out in the 60's called The Silver Eggheads by Fritz Leiber where writers have been replaced by machines called Wordmills that crank out books and humans can no longer write even if though they want to. All they do is take credit for what the robots put out.
I got curious about the their/there thing and modern word processors. So I tested with MS Word: - It failed to flag, "Everyone went to get there boots." - It failed to flag, "Everyone went to fetch there boots." - It did flag "Everyone went to collect there boots." I assume that for the first one it was confused by the fact that "get there" is a common phrase. For the second one, I guess it just didn't know much about the word fetch. So grammar checkers are still pretty stupid.
The best computer to use for catching grammatical, spelling and word choice issues is definitely your brain. If you've fed it enough information, by reading voraciously from a young age—good books that contain sentences and all that—your brain will spot things that are 'wrong' with your writing, more quickly and more accurately than any spellchecker-grammar-fixer programme there is. The brain might not know exactly how to spell every word on earth, but it will nearly always notice when one is not right. If a sentence sounds clunky, your brain will most likely pick it up during an edit. If you've inadvertently used it's when you meant its, or there when you meant their, your brain will spot it during an edit. However, like a real computer, your brain is only as good as the information that's fed into it. So if you don't read much, your brain will not be trained to recognise these errors. It has nothing to do with intelligence, only with what information exists inside it. The best training for a writer is to be a reader first. Not in the sense that you're looking to copy somebody else's style or ideas ...but just to get your brain into training with the written word. Training your brain is really is the best answer to the problem. It's not the only answer, but I maintain it's the best one. Read. Read a lot. Read what you enjoy, but read as much as you can. As often as you can.
Absolutely, @jannert! As I read through this thread, I started thinking of this issue as the difference between painting and photography. @tonguetied seems to want to be a photographer, positioning his subjects where they need to be against the background they need, then snapping the shot. The technology takes the picture that he designs. Some of the rest of us (myself included) don't want to leave the capturing of the image to the technology. We want to do it ourselves. We take up our paint brushes and meticulously paint the images we want to see - all the texture, color subtlety, shading, emphasis, focus, and all the rest of it - we want complete control. That's the art of writing for me. I recognize the art of photography, but leaving the details to technology doesn't work for me.
Story and style should be somehow one, that's what I've learned. Conversely, you can have a perfect-style story in which nothing happens at all but linguistically it may be brilliant. The trick is to let your language tell the story the way a camera operator shoots a scene in a movie. Or so I think and try to achieve.
@jannert Although grammarly is sometimes a handy helper, not always, of course, but it can steer you in the right direction at times. While, at the same time, I hold the same truth, namely to read avidly. There's a whole section in my writing journal on how I subjectively perceive the way my brain operates and processes the information input; English being a foreign language to me, I can in certain moments clearly discern individual stages I've undergone. I definitely agree that not only production but also input caters for the development of the language code. Though having not read it, Johnatan Livingston Seagull is about it: entering higher and yet higher echelons of performance, realizing the preceding was just a base for the upcoming.
I am totally in awe of somebody who learns to write beautifully in a foreign language. That takes study and concentration, and probably isn't going to be installed in the brain simply by reading—although reading certainly can't hurt. I was aiming what I said at native English speakers who are trying to write in English. They should do a lot of reading, if they don't already. You folks for whom English is a foreign language ...heck, do it any way you can! I think you're amazingly brave to try, and I wish you total success—even if you use a computer to help you along.
I like that analogy because, interestingly, it brings to mind the miracle of photography. It is an equalizer. It eliminates skill with paint as a requirement to share interesting, informative, and even emotionally powerful images with others, without being dismissed with criticism of bad form. And yet it has by no means replaced painting as an artistic medium -- it has merely put painting in its place. I respect and appreciate the form of a good painting of a woman almost-smiling, but if I had to choose between the opportunity to see it and the opportunity to see a photograph of the earth from outer space, then I sure as hell would choose to see the earth in its unaltered, uninterpreted perfection. I yearn for the day when thoughts can be captured as effortlessly images, and the thoughts that happen to find their way into the minds of skilled communicators will not have so much of an edge over the thoughts that are truly worth thinking. I mean, the alternative to that opinion is to think that miscommunication is a good thing, or that it is good to limit people's ability to share their thoughts. But yes, an author is a painter with words.
I think this statement from Lemex in a different thread really points to what I was trying to say about using a program with writing. Although I like minstrel's metaphor and really like Daemon's viewpoint, I really don't mean to imply that a program would write your story for you. As all of you have said, what would be the point? My metaphor: for this group an author is like a mathematician, at best I strive to be an accountant, but more likely will be happy to balance my checkbook. I changed an h to a b in Lemex's quote because I believe that is what he meant, if that is wrong it is my fault.
