ah--Plot summaries. As I see it, the problem is not so much that they
are detailed, but that they are detailed to the point of incoherence.
It helps when it is a summary, when it shows the main lines of the
action and the key relationships. When it recounts every exchange in
the episode, you might as well rent the DVD and watch it. It will take
less time than trying to untangle the summary.The key word I've
learned to anticipate is "meanwhile".
Of course bad writing is not limited to plots, but it sticks out there
so clearly. that's why I like outlines, and list format. it's easier
to do that naively and still be comprehensible, than to try for long
paragraphs without thinking how a paragraph should be organized.
On 12/4/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 12/5/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
In particular the articles on "Characters in
[whatever]" or "List of
murders in [some series]" have always seemed to be enormously helpful
in keeping things straight. The more obscure the minor characters,
the more we need an encyclopedia.
There's definitely a line somewhere. There's "having an encyclopaedia
article about" and then there's "exhaustively documenting". There was
an article recently with several huge paragraphs documenting, in
minute details, everything that had gone in a single episode of a Big
Brother episode. Who had said what to whom, how they responded, why
the first person was upset, then how they played with whatever by
themselves singing whatever...
And of course there is the problem of "in universe" styles - the
difference between "Joe appeared only sporadically throughout the
second series, chiefly as a comic device to..." and "Joe is seldom
seen, as he is working in his laboratory, but whenever he turns up he
is sure to crack a great gag..." Vomit, vomit.
Steve
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David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.