"Captain Spacelackey sailed his ship, Spaceship 0, on her maiden voyage. Everything went well in the Spiral Arm 5 quadrant when...the Evil Ship 3 attacked him.
Lord Tallnscary was a bad, bad man.
The end."
Writing Fantasy / Sci-Fi: The trap of the Proper name.
Moderator: I'm Murrin
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jacob Raver, sinTempter
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 1744
- Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:54 pm
- Location: Wisconsin, US
Sunshine Music
Deep Music
"I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge." - Tony Block, Planet Terror
Deep Music
"I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge." - Tony Block, Planet Terror
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DukkhaWaynhim
- The Gap Into Spam
- Posts: 9195
- Joined: Thu Nov 13, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: Deep in thought
The trap of the proper name is not so trappy as the difficulty of constructing a good first paragraph, let alone a good first chapter.
Thou shalt not inundate the reader with too many jargon phrases that require mass exposition -- for should that exposition be placed in the first chapter, thou shalt lose the reader.
Thou shalt not provide the reader with too little information, as this gives them little incentive to read onward.
Thou shalt not provide the reader with too much information, as this confuses them and quickly loses them.
Thou shalt not barrage the reader with clichees of your chosen genre in the first few pages, for they are fickle and will lose interest.
Thou shalt not engage in the same name game, whereby the pose of thy prose shows loads of odious ode-ery, by plan or by whim, as it is an onerous mode of writ to tame, and the shame is that the work is ignored as lame.
A name should empower a character to transcend his idiom, to take protagonistic control of the story, and to resonate in the mind of the reader as a beacon of awesomeness amidst the mundanery of 'normal' life... and it should be short, to save space.
: )
dw
Thou shalt not inundate the reader with too many jargon phrases that require mass exposition -- for should that exposition be placed in the first chapter, thou shalt lose the reader.
Thou shalt not provide the reader with too little information, as this gives them little incentive to read onward.
Thou shalt not provide the reader with too much information, as this confuses them and quickly loses them.
Thou shalt not barrage the reader with clichees of your chosen genre in the first few pages, for they are fickle and will lose interest.
Thou shalt not engage in the same name game, whereby the pose of thy prose shows loads of odious ode-ery, by plan or by whim, as it is an onerous mode of writ to tame, and the shame is that the work is ignored as lame.
A name should empower a character to transcend his idiom, to take protagonistic control of the story, and to resonate in the mind of the reader as a beacon of awesomeness amidst the mundanery of 'normal' life... and it should be short, to save space.
: )
dw
"God is real, unless declared integer." - Unknown
