GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Novelisation: crappy

POSTED BY: BRAINMISSING
UPDATED: Sunday, October 16, 2005 22:45
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VIEWED: 15288
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Sunday, October 16, 2005 10:45 PM

RUNA27


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Originally posted by Ptrope:
Two major grammatical errors in this sentence (ironic, considering it comments upon awkward sentence structure):



They weren't "major" at all. :\ Sorry, but one of the boards I visit is Godawful Fan Fiction, and you have not SEEN "major" grammar errors until you have seen the crap that gets posted to fanfiction.net.

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His sentence structure is awkward and pitifully, reminds me of some of the stories in my Grade 12 writing class at the beginning of the year (before we'd learned anything).
You should have used "pitiful," an adjective, instead of "pitifully," an adverb.



The way I was schooled in English, that is acceptable in informal writing so long as there is a comma.

If she had written "sadly" instead of "pitifully", it would be the same structure, and that's perfectly good English. She merely substituted a stronger, more derogatory adverb is all.

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Also, the "reminds me" is unrelated to any noun in the preceding clause; it needs a noun or pronoun to define it.



Read it again. "His sentence structure" is the subject and is exactly what was related to the "reminds me". It needs no noun or pronoun because anyone could infer the noun or pronoun from the beginning of the sentence.

And even then, having less-than-perfect grammar doesn't mean that narrative can't strike you as stilted.

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Misspelling or simply an incorrect choice of contraction:
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There's plenty of writers out there who are hysterically funny, and don't insult the intelligence of their readers.
"Writers" is plural, therefore "there's" is incorrect; it should have been "There are plenty of writers" (and maybe substitute "many" for "plenty of").



I'll give you that one on "there's", but it's hardly a "major" error. Most native speakers would not have noticed, nor bothered to care about that, which strikes me as just having absorbed too much colloquial speech and subconsciously placing an incorrect (but easier to say verbally) contraction.

As for "plenty of", that is perfectly good English, it's just colloquial. :\ Therefore, that is not an error, which makes me wonder why you bothered to bring it up.

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Well, you did say you didn't make any errors ;).



She only made one error, and it's one I see native speakers doing all the time, especially since "There're" is so awkward to say out loud that there's a tendency to not want to use it, even if it's correct. It's a common error, and all of the other "errors" you pointed out aren't errors in informal American/Canadian English.

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As for KRAD's novelization, I wasn't especially shot with it, myself, because I thought it was a poor editorial choice to construct the narrative in an autobiographical fashion, speaking in the characters' "voices" and changing from scene to scene as the focal character changes. I found it a conceit, very artificial and off-putting; I would have much preferred the narrative be simply that, because it doesn't really do a good job of getting into the characters' heads, the only really valid reason to take such an approach. I bought the book, but I gave up reading it after the first chapter, because of this; if he had chosen one character to relate the entire story, such as Inara or Kaylee, or possibly even River, I think it would have been a much stronger story.



If it didn't feel natural, than the narrative was stilted, which means it was awkwardly phrased. Phrasing obviously is the manner in which the words are put together, which can be directly related to sentence structure.

Good grammar in a sentence does not automatically equal sentence structure that isn't awkward, it just means that the sentence structure is all right by the standards of the official/academic version of the language.

And as a matter of fact, considering the very colloquial way in which Firefly's main characters tend to speak, I find it odd that you're basically saying: "It's not awkward so long as it's grammatically pristine." Which is the impression I got from your post.

Problem is, it doesn't always work that way. Especially if you're in the head of a character who doesn't speak using perfect grammar (and a lot of the characters don't).



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I rather enjoyed the novelization, but I did have a few problems with it. Primarily that it read much like the screenplay with a few extra lines thrown in.


This is exactly how every novel based on a TV series tends to read to me (including the Buffy novels), and how most movie novelizations tend to read to me. I've tried to read and enjoy them, but when a book leaves you wishing for a DVD, you know something's been done badly.

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It's clear that KRAD is a fan of Firefly, though - which is the only reason I picked it up in the first place.


Unfortunately, simply being a fan of something doesn't mean you can write well for it as well, even if you're otherwise a decent writer. Fanfiction makes this very, very painfully clear.

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Movie novelizations are tricky, because you cannot include much more action outside of what the screenplay contains, unless you fill "gaps" in time (and there are not very many gaps in Serenity to fill). Otherwise, the book would be much shorter.



That said, there's a difference between describing what happened and giving a stage direction. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who do movie or TV novelizations seem unable to realize this fully, which is why they feel an awful lot like scripts with extra words thrown in.

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(Oh, it might be noted that KRAD writes a LOT of science fiction. I'd say the fact that he continues to get published says something about his writing).



Not really. A lot of complete hacks continue to get published all the time. I can't specifically name any off of the top of my head, because I can generally tell they're hacks from a mile away and avoid them like the plague.

Also, it may just mean that his writing works for other SF. Firefly is very special, really, with it's own unique flavor that's pretty hard to pull off all that well in print-only form. Still, from what I've heard about the changing of POVs and mischaracterizations, I get the feeling that he was in over his head and tried to do too much when he should have just been trying to stick to one POV and get his characterizations straight.

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Speaking of writing, it is hard to take criticism of an established author seriously when the criticism has several spelling and grammatical mistakes.



Not really. This wasn't an essay, it was a post on a message board, where things are posted often as they are thought of or shortly after they've been experienced, and meant only to provoke conversation about the subject.

Additionally, there WERE no "spelling mistakes" - she was using the Canadian spelling system. And there was only one grammatical mistake.


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The real 1st rule of writing is proofread :).



Good god. I'm sorry... but I've just finished a stint of reading some of the most HORRIBLE fiction to be found online, and it was ALL proofread.

Proofreading isn't the "first" rule. It's down WAY further on the list than that. The first rule is something more along the lines of: "Have some common sense". Is it important, if you're writing a book, a work of fiction, or an actual essay and/or report? Yes, certainly. But it is nowhere near as important as you're saying, trust me. I have seen the depths of Writers' Hell, and it is the proofread-but-still-completely-idiotic portions of fanfiction.net.

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Normally I would have ignored them, as I see far, far worse every day... but when complaining about someone else's writing, they stand out.



Not until someone mistakeningly points out Canadian spelling as a "mistake", they don't.

And since when is spelling the same thing as sentence structure, or colloquial speech automatically the same as "awkward" sentence structure?

Don't get me wrong, spelling and grammar are important, but they are not the be-all and end-all of an online argument on a message board.

By the way, I seem to recall that she didn't actually say "his spelling is horrible", or "his grammar is bad". She said the sentences were awkward. Again, you can have absolutely perfect grammar and spelling and still have something sound "awkward".


-Runa27




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