Comments | onyxhawke: K.I.S.S.! K.I.S.S.! K.I.S.S.!

onyxhawke

K.I.S.S.! K.I.S.S.! K.I.S.S.!

Oct 28, 2007 23:27

Among the half a trillion things that bemuse me about writing, is the "chapter quote". To me, it seems like entirely more work than is needed. To me, a non writer, the extra work spent putting them together could be better spent working on the text. Also there is the fact that for consistencies sake, once you have them, you'll probably be expected ( Read more... )

the art and science of writing, writing, vodka, people are strange, reading

Comments 11

archangelbeth October 29 2007, 12:58:44 UTC

...chapter quote? Like a pullquote from the chapter? Or like Robert Asprin did with the Mythadventures series, putting in pseudo-quotes and attributing them to various famous people?

(And then there's clips of poem/song... I think Barbara Hambly did that in at least one of her Dog Wizard trilogy...)

Brust seems to have gotten around the expectation of each of his Dragaeran books being the same format, at least. He mixes those things up hugely in styles. *jealouses at Brust*

onyxhawke October 30 2007, 06:01:31 UTC

The Asprin/Brust variety.

I don't grok why someone would do that to themselves unless it's just fun for them.

archangelbeth October 30 2007, 12:51:55 UTC

Hmmmmm.

In the Hambly case, it rounds out the world with context, without actually having to put it into the viewpoint character's conscious thoughts. In the other case... Hm. Brust is doing much the same thing, IIRC -- quotes from the character, quotes from people in his world... (Though IIRC again, Dragaera is partly based on a RPG world, so he probably has notebooks full of quotes that he can use, much as I would be able to mine many people for quotes about In Nomine, such as, "Being annoying in the service of God is what Ofanim are good at!")

I guess Asprin is just good at it and it's fun for him.

bfaolan October 29 2007, 13:53:41 UTC

onyxhawke October 30 2007, 06:02:00 UTC

1000 blessings.

davefreer October 30 2007, 06:22:06 UTC

I don't do them all the time, but I really loved writing the ones for STARDOGS and in SLOWTRAIN. In both cases I used them as background 'fillers'. If a reader skips them it makes no difference to the follow-ability of the story. If they read them they give background information ( ... )

archangelbeth October 30 2007, 12:53:48 UTC

Once the colony ship accelerates it must never slow down again. Never. It will drop space habitat modules at each sun. But it must just keeps cruising slowly along, a slow train to the stars.

...Oh, COOL.

davefreer October 30 2007, 13:12:35 UTC

(evil smile) and it has a sort of anti-hero hero called O'Mike entirely in the chapter headers.

archangelbeth October 30 2007, 13:20:44 UTC

*snicker* Wicked. I salute you!

Thread 5

vorpalkeith October 30 2007, 11:32:07 UTC

This is something I must disagree with you on, sir. I'm a sucker for them. I'm doing sort of chapter quotes at the beginning of each issue of my comic series for example. In this case though, it's because there are things you might not be able to express without that prose quotation and it helps to flush out the universe in ways you might not get purely from the visual.