Fred Clark has posted a new post, NRA: Squeezing the stallion, at Patheos.com.
This week Fred writes about pp. 8-10 of Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist
Excerpt:
Brief detour here back to Creative Writing 101. Let’s say you’re writing a story with a character named Jim and you want your readers to regard Jim as brave. You can go about this in several different ways:
1. Show Jim doing something that requires bravery.
2. Have another character in your story describe Jim as brave.
3. Have the omniscient narrator of your story tell the reader that Jim is brave.
4. Have Jim tell the reader that Jim is brave.
Those are listed in order. The first is the most effective approach; the last is the least effective. The last one, in fact, can be counter-productive.
[Fred Clark, NRA: Squeezing the stallion, June 8, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]
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What I think is most telling here is that LaJenkins is unable actually to depict positive qualities in anybody. We can talk all we like about how he paints weak women, and that's certainly valid, but actually his men are pretty pathetic too; while the misogyny is present, there's quite a bit of misanthropy as well.
Chloe's day-and-a-half trip across post-apocalyptic America could have been a novel in itself.
The Buck-and-Rayford mutual admiration society is not only silly, it's so overdone that it leads to slashy thoughts among the dirty-minded (i.e. pretty much anyone who isn't an RTC).
Posted by: Firedrake | Jun 09, 2012 at 05:29 AM