Show vs. Tell

Classics can be written wrong.

They are not gods.

 

You had me going for a bit there, digitig, but honestly citing F Scott Fitzgerald? Yeaouch.

Oh, and as far as your research reply, I honestly have no clue what you said or meant. Sorry!

 

As I said, I searched a million-word corpus of contemporary published fiction. Now, where is your evidence? Not from pundits talking through the backsides or talking about completely different categories of writing, from actual published great works? And even if you can produce some, that doesn't mean that their style is the only valid style.

 

why are you arguing over the word down?

Now I think you're just arguing because you can't admit it's redundant. I read a lot about editing and what is looked for. I also go to two writing groups with people who have published books in the here and now and worked with editors. I'm not here to be right and make people suck at writing. The entire point of me bothering with another forum is to learn and help others. But you want to be right, not to learn.

 

I do admit that it's ideationally redundant. I don't agree that removing everything that is ideationally redundant makes for better creative writing. I think it's a stylistic choice, and that "sat down" is a valid (and popular) stylistic choice. You don't seem to be willing to learn that creative writing isn't a tidy set of hard-and-fast rules or that people can validly prefer styles you don't like. It seems you don't like one of my favourite authors. Do you think F Scott Fitzgerald is a bad writer or just one you don't like (or do you think they're the same thing?)

 

The fun about reading editing books is that they pick classics and point out that they are mostly good writing, but they have their own set of problems. Meaning that just because it was allowed then, doesn't mean it's allowed now.

There is a genre for flowery womenly language, sci-fi isn't one of those genres.

 

Great writer for his time. Not that good for today.

An important lesson I learned was understanding I'd be published in the future, not in the past. That's not to say there aren't many great things to learn from old books, just that there's a balance in the way you approach such writing. Good for general lessons and ideas, but not usually good for specifics.

I love Philip K. Dick and think he was a true visionary and literary genius with tons to teach writers of all genres. But no way in hell would I call his writing excellent by today's standards, or try to write like him in a stylistic, technical sort of way.

 

So "sat down" is "flowery womenly language"? Really?

It's hard to find great modern works that are easy to search electronically, but Neil Gaiman uses "sat down" in American Gods. Really, you seem to have an obsession with paring everything down to a minimum. That can work, and maybe you only like things where it does work, but it's anything but a rule and just because you don't like it doesn't make it a deficiency in people who do. I'm still waiting for your examples of great writers who strictly avoid "down". As a hint, Charles Stross seems to. I don't much like his writing style, but some do.

 

Nope. I was replying to this:

It's not about minimum. It's about writing with a point.

 

The point there is, where do I find texts I can search electronically? The easy ones to find are the ones in the public domain, which means that they're old. But I have access to a pile of pretty much contemporary fiction texts compiled for academic research. The idea of the compilation is that it's a pretty representative selection of what's out there; some good stuff, some rubbish. I searched that with a specialist academic tool and found that "sat down" is far more common that "sat" for the action. That means that "sat down" is (still) a successful stylistic choice (in terms of getting published) even if it's not to your taste.

As for whether sci-fi has to be stripped-down or can be verbose -- well, different sci-fi authors have different styles and attract different readers. Maybe the ones you like all write one way, but other people like writers who write in a different way.

 

That's like stating Some people like onions and some people don't.

That sentence doesn't add anything to the conversation or the story.

 

This has stopped being a productive discussion.