Priorities!
Monday, December 21, 2009 10:57 PM
I hate English!
Not the subject. I love the subject.
I hate the way English is taught. Suuure, copying down long paragraphs and big, delicious words can help your English. But it's not how fancy you are that matters. The best writers can create captivating stories with the most basic words. 'Sides, I don't get all this emphasis on vocabulary. I copy down passages I think are brilliant, because I love it and learn from it. Forcing people to do it has the opposite effect. They end up using words wrongly. Or hating you.
I may know many fancypants words, but I am horrid at writing stories. Clothes may make the man, but it's not the words that make a story. It is the artistic way you weave people, events and places into a spider-web of conflict and conclusion. It isn't what you write, but how you write it.
Even established authors' writing can bother me, because their language is so jumpy. They write with little irrelevant and showy odds and ends that interrupt the flow. I want to know what's next, not how extravagant your writing is. Get the actors. Doll up the set. Create a conflict. Solve it. Less is more.
There's no need to be fancy. We shouldn't be learning what to write. We should be learning how to write.
Monday, December 21, 2009 10:57 PM
I hate English!
Not the subject. I love the subject.
I hate the way English is taught. Suuure, copying down long paragraphs and big, delicious words can help your English. But it's not how fancy you are that matters. The best writers can create captivating stories with the most basic words. 'Sides, I don't get all this emphasis on vocabulary. I copy down passages I think are brilliant, because I love it and learn from it. Forcing people to do it has the opposite effect. They end up using words wrongly. Or hating you.
I may know many fancypants words, but I am horrid at writing stories. Clothes may make the man, but it's not the words that make a story. It is the artistic way you weave people, events and places into a spider-web of conflict and conclusion. It isn't what you write, but how you write it.
Even established authors' writing can bother me, because their language is so jumpy. They write with little irrelevant and showy odds and ends that interrupt the flow. I want to know what's next, not how extravagant your writing is. Get the actors. Doll up the set. Create a conflict. Solve it. Less is more.
There's no need to be fancy. We shouldn't be learning what to write. We should be learning how to write.
Labels: Discussion, Rants