Yeah, Silent Generation. Same as my Grandpa.
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My dad is 1960, so he’s the tail end of the Boomers, just like I’m the start of the Mellenials, GenX is sanwiched right between us.
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Makes sense.
I am a “Zillenial” but feel more like a Silent Boomer.
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Y’know what I find more useful in general?
Articles on story structure. Plot archetypes, character arcs, pacing and conflict, general plot points, scene structure, etc. I mean, maybe I’m just saying that because I’m obsessed with story structure trying to pull off the chiastic structure after all, but I dunno how people throw out first drafts without this stuff in the back of their head at all times. It saves so much rewrite time since it’s foundational and changing it later means editing sooo many scenes.
I love story structure, damnit. Everything else is secondary to it. I mean, there’s no one size fits all, but I think it was found that all stories follow one of seven basic plot trajectories? Something like that.
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Structure isn’t everything, but for most stories, it can be an issue.
Most classical one that I was forced to study any of in College was As I Lay Dying, and that thing is a bit of a mess, if you grade it on “structure”.
Given the vast variety of texts through maybe 8K of man’s history (that is still fairly regularly read by people), structure ain’t a thing until fairly recent in history. In some instances, its clear that time isn’t a linear function in early literature. So chasing that alone would be a bit fad-ish?
We are post-structure, so most works that are currently popular are based on a pretty strict structure, no doubt.
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If you read folktales, most of them hardly have any sort of structure.
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I mean, I main tragic and chiastic structure, both of which were born in BCE, so I wouldn’t necessarily call it recent. Everything has structure—most things have some kind of beginning and resolution. It’s unique to practically every story although there are conventions that tend to reoccur fairly consistently.
Pacing is still undeniably one of the biggest aspects of modern story telling, though—there’s a reason developmental editing comes first and is important. I feel like at least learning the basics is probably fairly beneficial.
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Or Churrotales.
I have no attention spam to do a novel, lol.
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Writing advice for beginners and whatnot is great and all but should everyone be a writer? I’ve certainly met a few people whose efforts would be better implemented in a different hobby…
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Especially the people who write boring, prententious stuff, which would be better suit to essays, instead of novels.
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Essay writing is an art. Essayists are real writers too ;-; I was thinking of a certain lady I met who happens to be delusional
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Basics, yes.
Chiastic structure is common in proverbs, psalms: basic mirroring, often to contrast. It’s really more of a mnemonic device, which is why it’s in the poetry section most clearly. Many of the older stories were considered history, and didn’t do that, as much (although you can find translations that try that), and were bogged down with long lists of ancestors between stories. To the point where either we have to accept it as historical documents by structure (and not literary) or accept that mirroring wasn’t consistent at all. It’s roughly guaranteed to cover about half the total era. BCE still has 2K years of BCE to cover before the halfway mark on that timing.
But it’s not wholly important.
Just the general, this stuff is more rigid and detailed the closer it gets to us is sufficient. It would just be a shame for Faulkner to throw out his book and rewrite it because it’s lack of form upset him too much to keep his story.
The only benefit of that would be I’d have had less to study, you know? lol
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Yeah, I agree, but I mean if it’s gonna be an essay, it shouldn’t be a fictional novel if it’s an essay 
there are different types of writing and all are equally valid in their own way, but yeah delusionists are annoying.
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Tbf you don’t necessarily have to be good at it to have a hobby and derive enjoyment from it. If a person likes writing then who really cares tbh. Whether it’s good or not is for the publishing world.
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It’s only going to matter if you force them to read it. There ain’t enough force in this world to really push that, no?
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Look if I could convince @JellyGhost to warch Akagi, anything is possible.
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Yeah sure I guess. But then we’ve got people spamming submissions into competitions and publishers because their mum or spouse thought their writing was good.
I’ll stick with this: If you don’t know what to write, then don’t write.
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I was obligated (for some reason) to read this one chicks’ story and EVERY comment on there was “This is awesome!”
It read like she ran it through text-to-speech and then went and retyped it without hooked on phonics working for her. The plot was CEOs dropping out of their jobs to pretend like they were neighboring frat boys to some small business bakers, as best I could tell.
I tried 3 times.
I told her I couldn’t, and that I wasn’t saying “give up”, but she needed to sit down with an editor who could walk her through what she did.
So, I can see situations where the obligation is deep enough.
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