WTF is this?
Posted: 05 Mar 2009 00:30
DUNE DISCUSSION FORUM FOR ORTHODOX HERBERTARIANS
http://www.jacurutu.com/
I wonder if this leads into the "perfect prose" quote? I've never been able to find it again...Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged.
Kevin on the human language capacity.Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen.
Another example of the "wouldn't it be cool if" principle.Each book will have a lot of cliffhangers, because I like that.
From retard to pretard?I've had the same, full-time assistant and typist for eight or nine years now. She's read everything I've written, she types everything and does a good job, translates it and makes comments.
Does this guy realise that most of our robots are entirely functional and look nothing like humans?If you had an alien race that looked like insects, then they would build robots to look like themselves, not to look like people.
Glad to see that keen grasp of complicated science there...Of course you don't make any noise in space, because there's no air.
We get it, you're illiterate.Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen.
FH's account of what he and his buddies talk about in Road to Dune in the letters about Dune before publication makes him seem about 50 times less boring than you.We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.
Well, there's no substitute for error-checking. Most of us can remember the bits of FH's work you contradict though.Wouldn't you like to have an augmented memory chip that you could plug into your head so you don't have to look everything up and remember everything?
A group of my friends and I used to do that on LSD, we'd "write" SF stories. They never sounded as good the next day. BUt it does help to talk it out, especially with several people.A Thing of Eternity wrote:I've often thought of setting up a mic and just talking to myself to pound out ideas, or rough in scenes. I tend to talk to myself about this stuff anyways, I just never record it and much gets lost. I think the concept has merit. However, KJA kills the execution by dictating not just roughed in scenes, dialogue or setting, but by actually trying to dictate the prose itself, and then making someone else type it all out for him. That's probably a big part of why it all comes off in such atrocious language, with terribly broken grammar.
I'd argue that.Schu wrote:There's nothing wrong with the hike/dictate method ...
Same here. I just wasted another 15 minutes looking for it.SandChigger wrote:I wonder if this leads into the "perfect prose" quote? I've never been able to find it again...
Repetition and restatement are time honored tools of oral tradition. Also, tying certain specific adjectives to specific characters "Doe-eyed Hera" etc.Baraka Bryan wrote: could explain some of the repetition too... he's losing a train of thought but has to keep the prose going so he repeats something he said 5 minutes ago
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of dictating your ideas to a tape recorder for later retrieval. The only things that are wrong with it are the way KJA applies the idea. He seems to treat it as an efficiency thing, where it should be a convenience/opportunity thing. It should be treated as a convenient way to take notes quickly and deal with them later, when you're doing some recreational activity that pretty much precludes actual note-taking. KJA treats it as a way to get as much written crap out of his time as possible instead, not even bothering to write up his own notes, and getting a friggin secretary to do it instead.TheDukester wrote:I'd argue that.Schu wrote:There's nothing wrong with the hike/dictate method ...
Given the evidence in front of us — alleged "Dune" books that are complete and utter shit — I'd say there's plenty wrong with it.
Dictation, a full-time typist, "editing" that is an insult to the concept ... they're all just shortcuts to rush yet another KJA volume into print. For an alleged "writer," Kevvie actually does very little writing when you stop and think about it.
Its too hard to work with a nice window in front of you, much less an actual panoramic vista. Ideas get diluted when you have something else to concentrate on. Tell me you'd even be able to concentrate if someone were reading Dune to you on a hike, much less trying to write a Dune book.Schu wrote:There's nothing wrong with the hike/dictate method except that it tempts one to do too little editing and proof-reading.
That is why I am CUBE MONKEY NUMBER 1!!!Omphalos wrote:Its too hard to work with a nice window in front of you, much less an actual panoramic vista. Ideas get diluted when you have something else to concentrate on. Tell me you'd even be able to concentrate if someone were reading Dune to you on a hike, much less trying to write a Dune book.Schu wrote:There's nothing wrong with the hike/dictate method except that it tempts one to do too little editing and proof-reading.
Failure to edit properly is something that happens later. When he's hiking he cant keep his mind on teh story or the elements of it, so what he comes up with is watered down, second-thought shit.