To didact or not to didact...

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by DrWhozit, Dec 17, 2013.

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  1. T.Trian

    T.Trian Overly Pompous Bastard Supporter Contributor

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    Just one reader's opinion: I love it when a book teaches me something interesting / useful, especially if it's written so that I don't necessarily even realize I'm being taught.
    Kinda like... if I read a realistic fight scene and I notice one of the characters does something I could actually use in the ring / in a self-defense situation, and only later realize a work of fiction just taught me something useful.
    Sadly, this happens very rarely. I wish more writers did stuff like that...
     
  2. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    Open hands and phalangeal resilience are only developed over years of plunges into increasing target density while spending equal time burning up the fret board with articulated riffs. One's fingers appear as though the assassin is double jointed, still they are merely refined motion of the forearm muscles constantly reforming the cartilage of carpals, metacarpals and phalanges to precision tools. This is not unlike the choosing of the proper collet when using a vertical turret lathe. The cutter must be sharp. The chuck must be tightened without deforming the piece within its grasp. This is the difference between the master ripping out the heart of the bull or the reverse.
     
  3. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    hubris, thy name is 'whozit'! ;)
     
  4. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    In ancient Greek, hubris referred to actions that shamed and humiliated the victim for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser.[1] The term had a strong sexual connotation, and the shame reflected on the perpetrator as well.[2]

    Just because one cannot understand what someone else says, is no reason to shame, humiliate or insult them. If I want that sort of treatment, I can trot across the street and explain to the hillbillies how 3 tobacco cigarettes creates more greenhouse gases than a modern, EPA regulated diesel engine run for the time it takes to smoke those phags. I don't need to apologize for hitting the books all these years, neither do I have to feel sympathy for those who chose to embrace the benighted mindset that follows Zane Grey, or abecedarian memes that think the meaning of life is contained in a basketball.
     
  5. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Then why deign to grace us with your exalted presence? One too few chairs amongst the row of demigods? Expelled were we? That's a shame. We've nothing here to offer but earth upon which to tread. I lament if that falls short of the heights to which it seems you are accustomed.
     
  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I think you missed her winkie, bro. It was tongue in cheek.
     
  7. Cerebral

    Cerebral Active Member

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    Easy there, big boy.
    I wasn't being (intentionally) condescending. I'm simply expressing an observation. If you feel that, by disagreeing with you, I've insulted you, then that's on you.

    But there are plenty of successful authors who did (or continue to do) what you (or I) would have told them not to. That's all I'm saying.
     
  8. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    Not missed at all. I simply remember the "hubris" directed at me for using a winkie about something I thought was harmless fun. (Remember the law offices of Smith, Wesson et al... ?) Sauce for the glucose is sauce for the glandular?
     
  9. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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  10. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    I'm always surprised when people here post a question based on their own writing of the "should I do..." or "is this piece too...", get answers that say "no, you shouldn't" or "Yes, it is way too..." and then argue with the responses. But I commend @DrWhozit for seeing that, by basing his question on his own piece, he set himself up to have to defend it. Then again, even if he had posted something by, say, Tom Clancy (who could get didactic as all get out), he might still have gotten testy with responses that didn't agree with what he wanted to do.

    But the post that caught my attention above all others was actually this one:

    Say, what?!

    If you find a forum-wide consensus on anything, I'll eat my hat. Because in the three years I've been here, I've learned that you can post anything on any subject, and chances are good you'll get an argument from somebody.

    More to the point, those of us who are in this for anything other than just our own private jollies are, if we have a brain, chasing the widest possible readership. Because your prose can drip pearls of wisdom from the first page to the last, and none of it will matter if no one reads the bloody thing. But if you talk down to the reader or preach at him/her, (s)he is going to toss you aside faster than you can yell, "doorjamb!"

    Members of this forum may have vastly different and conflicting ideas of what makes good fiction and how one gets there - I can think of no better examples than @JayG and myself - but I assure you that none of us are advocating "empty stories that say nothing in the plainest way possible" (regardless of what accusations we might make in the heat of argument).
     
  11. Cerebral

    Cerebral Active Member

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    I understand what you're saying, but do I have to preface every post I make with a disclaimer that states, "Everything that follows is my opinion or my subjective experience"? That should be assumed.

    And I said it seems to be the case; I didn't say it is the case. Whether my observation is true or not, it is certainly true that it seems to be true to me. I don't see any issue for contention here, especially considering I'm not the first to express such sentiments on this forum. (It was certainly a sentiment, by the way, and I presented it as such. Why challenge the veracity of a sentiment?)
    I think the argument (or debate) between the two of you is a result of miscommunication. You both seem to be saying the same exact thing, in different ways, with different emphases, and then misinterpreting each other. DISCLAIMER: That's how it seems to me. (It's a pain to do this, you know)
    Hey, now! Did you find a forum-wide consensus that supports this blanket statement??
     
  12. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    Actually, if you read through the discussions, you will find far more evidence to support my blanket statement than for yours.
     
  13. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    This is part of a discussion elsewhere I thought might help to extend to this discussion a relevant issue.

    ___________________________________________________________________

    Then they must [have new science], to write more than fan fic, learn NEW ideas. That FTL thread is totally contradictory to the venue you describe, yet it is a hot thread. Writers need not only mechanics, they need new designs. If they want to write a story with a plausible warp drive, they won't find one unless they accept that "The masses are asses" and look to the odd man out. To gain credibility, what choice does the oddball have but to show evidence supporting his case. This is the stuff exciting new work is derived from. Fan fic is like getting a McDonalds Happy Meal.
    I usually don't start squirting complex, abstract math all over everyone. Sooner or later, someone else will. Just like Steerpike said, he wishes more hard-core sci-fi was out there. To learn writing and discuss it, requires the most open mindedness anyone can imagine. I can paint a scene. I can animate it. The writer has to use words and often that satisfies someone more than art because they can imagine themselves doing the writing where painting a character as real as Pixar would is beyond them.
    Don't think I'm angry at you. I'm simply pleading my case. In the forum I'm offering food for thought from places I think most in here have never thought even existed. That takes a good label of ingredients and nutrients before someone decides if they can digest it.

    ____________________________________________________________________

    In reality, this was to ask if this form of writing is in bad form. I've seen quite a bit of differing opinion. That's great! 7 Billion people on this planet. Some want to lose themselves in Louis L'Amour. Some want the cutting edge. Cutting edge needs "Cutting Edge:101." This is the reason I compared my own work rather than hacking up someone else's.

    On a non-writer forum, the subject of writing came up and I offered someone that Chapter 6 to read. The response was ROTFLMAO!! Beyond that the statement was made, "...but I really need to read some of the first chapters to understand what all this new technology is." Mind you we're only looking at about 15 years into the future. We simply ARE on the brink of this sort of technology.

    When first writing it, the prologue was a bit like "The Pood." in that it had alternate histories including the Tea party getting stampeded by elephants on election day. That was omitted... It had stuff about the catholic church bilking humanity's wallets beginning by creating disharmony between the Gauls and the Franks. That was deleted with lot more including equal time for vagina and penis words...

    From what I've been able to tell, it's better to teach and lose a know-it-all bumpkin type reader than to confuse an enthusiastic cutting-edge-o-vore, Trekie type and lose all of them. Book club comes after the raves of the thorough mindset.
     
  14. Cerebral

    Cerebral Active Member

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    First: Congratulations. You look old-ish in your avatar, so I had imagined you'd be much more mature about a situation in which I've explicitly expressed the desire to avoid stepping on anyone's toes. Guess I was wrong, eh?

    Second: I made no such blanket statement. And if it came off as such, I attempted to clear up the confusion. I don't know what else to do. I'm beginning to think your inability to read a post properly caused the miscommunication between you and JayG.

    Third: Maybe you should "read through the discussions." I'm sure you'll find a few that you were involved in where many people argued in favor of writing only escapist stories.

    Fourth: You apparently thrive on confrontation. Get a life buddy; or get published at least once before you spend 30 minutes authoritatively responding to someone who isn't looking for trouble. I've said my piece.
     
    Last edited: Dec 18, 2013
  15. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    :D
    Wit, he haz it.

    But yeah, people are allowed to have different opinions, of course, but if I compare this place to a few other writing forums out there, writers here are by and large (imho) far less "empty" or "plain" and commercially oriented. But that's another topic...

    That's a good point (if I got it. Our proverbial brain waves rarely meet and your posts often fly right over my head. I think I'm a bit slow on the uptake). You're bound to get different feedback from non-writers than writers, but that's just how it is. Play your song to a musician and you'll get different feedback than from a layman. Both are valuable, but I think there might be more to learn from a writer's feedback technique-wise while the layman is probably the more potential buyer.
     
  16. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    Why must the non-writer be a layman?
     
  17. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    For the sake of conversation, I used "layman."
     
  18. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    @Ka Trian

    Hi Kat,

    https://www.writingforums.org/threads/dark-energy-considerations-mainstream-scientific-speculation-versus-outside-speculation.129731/#post-1177230

    You had mentioned about things flying over your head. The best way to resolve that I to begin seeing inside the ENFJ's mind. Steven King rarely uses a scientific team to give him a weird device for story. Either it's alien or the brainchild of some really weird scientist. Sci-Fi channel's "Eureka" isn't about Harvard, it's about gifted inventors. I do attempt to bring logic and even sensibility to the scientific enthusiasts, professional or otherwise.

    A mind recovered from drowning in dogma is a delight to the mental fisher.
     
  19. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

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    ...in case you hadn't noticed, we are not in ancient greece... here in the 21st century, in english, the word has a very different meaning from the one you seem to have used simply for argument's sake:

    and your definition left out this:
    i rest my case... ;) [still winking, too!]
     
  20. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    So... whether in ancient Greek definition or modern perversion, you are still doing the ancient Greek technique by gloating over your prowess of delivering a bogus insult to an undeserving victim? I have to revert to my statement that if I want a "drag the bastard down to my level of muck and mire" lack of acceptance to refined knowledge, I'd visit the nearby hillbillies across the street who are suspect to instigated the poisoning of my best Malamute that had a better spelling vocabulary than they do. I'm sure that helps me love the dive bomber's "hubris," ancient, modern or futuristic.
     
  21. Cerebral

    Cerebral Active Member

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    Damn you and your posting style, DrWhozit! My head, my poor head. :(
     
  22. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    Your poor head? Have you looked at my avatar lately?:eek:

    I'm already in Hell, so damning me is like the double negative; it damns me to Heaven. Thanks :)

    What ever happened to looking at who drew first blood? @mammamai has been demeaning me since I was a noob, trying to smooth it over with a winky emoticon. I'm not apologizing for being different, descriptive, decisive, direct, disarming, dauntless, or even delirious. Well we wont with workable Willy Wonka's wobbly worm well wonder works whether wanted or waved, but not immured.

    Beneath the cerebral surface resides the arachnoid mater. In the back of the head, optical images are projected onto this membrane that exists synonymously to the villi of the small intestines, as the leaves of a tree to its roots. Although the surface has an area of perhaps several square feet, the inner surface of these are like microscopic balloons that expand exponentially to miles. We still have many unanswered questions about how this works in the brain, but we know the villi filter bile from myriads of capillaries, so shit happens.
     
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  23. Cerebral

    Cerebral Active Member

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    Actually, I'm adding to your sentence. Now you'll stay for two eternities.
    I ain't touchin' that, my friend. Sometimes, we have to be mature. I haven't responded my "opponents" on this thread, have I?
    Okay, you've lost me. :/
     
  24. DrWhozit

    DrWhozit Banned

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    No. You queerly quoted my quip quite qualifying as a quanta quittance to quixotic quorum as quibble quota quintessence. -1 x -1 x 1 =1 or -1^2 = 1 or (-1^2) x 1 = 1 ... Once in Heaven all is positive. :)

    Never bring a knife to a gun fight ;)


    FWIW, I don't consider you an opponent. I just confuse the Medussa's snakes until they look at each other in puzzlement. Persius couldn't do that, so he had to use a mirror...
     
  25. JayG

    JayG Banned Contributor

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    No one had to explain what the Star Trek transporter did to the audience. Nor was a line of explanation required when Han Solo whacked the panel on the Millennium Falcon into operation. They did it through context. If you place the reader int the protagonist's POV, as against focusing on them externally, the reader will understand the need that drive the protagonist to use the device, and what s/he expects as a result of it. If the protagonist doesn't know s/he asks and we learn, too, or pushes the start button and we learn along with the protagonist. Every time you explain you stop the scene clock and risk killing the scene's momentum, as well as possibly boring the reader.

    As for didactic writing, it's a literary genre convention, where it's expected that as a character walks from a room's doorway to say hello to the host, we'll hear the history plus editorial comment on everything that catches the protagonist's eye as they move to ward that host. If you love it, it works. As a general thing, though, what you presented was the narrator looking at a scene that the reader can't actually see, and providing visual and editorial comment on things the protagonist is neither paying attention to nor interested in—in other words, unrelated to the actual story. That may be the reason for the comments you're getting.
     
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