🚀 go-pugleaf

elf@halcyon.com (Elf Sternberg) writes:

I agree with what you say about artistic integrity and protagonist's
views.  Before I had written much, I thought that I could use writing
to explore worldviews that I didn't understand.  I'm now fairly
convinced that I couldn't write well any PoV who isn't in some way at
least a fragment of me.

Of course, like all humans, I contain multitudes.

>    I disagree with this, as well as Larry's insistence that "A story
> theme that can be summed into one sentence will never be a novel."  I
> still write stories... short, medium, novel, and even multi-book, that
> can easily be summed up into one sentence.

I suspect that we would, if we follow this up, start quibbling about
what makes an adiquite summary.

In any case, I was imprecise when I spoke, as I meant thematic 
summation, and your examples seem to indicate you're talking
about plot summary.
 
I seem to have deleted your comments about your basic themes that
reappear in your own work.  I suspect that, should you write a novel
(or call the whole cycle a fix-up novel, which I suggest you don't)
ALL of them would crop up.  And they could not be summarily dealt with
in a single sentence as you have just demonstrated.

>    Take a look at any episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (a
> local favorite, I think, because the writing is as beautifully
> functional as it is transparent).  

I'd hardly call Star Trek scripts an exemplum of good writing, let alone
beautifully functional.  This is not taking a pot-shot at genre
writing, as I do that myself; but at the IMHO shoddy craft of the
typical ST teleplay.
 
> Hamlet's internal themes do not stand up to the basic theme surrounding
> the whole play, "Indecision sucks."

I'm amazed that you can tease this simple sentence out of a morase that
three centuries of criticism cannot.  This is hardly the only thing
going on in the play, and the others do "stand up" to it, if you mean
what I think you mean.

	Larry "Another Word" Hammer
--

LNH@physics.arizona.edu   \   Hidden harmony is better than manifest.
GEnie: L.HAMMER2           \      -- Heraclitus, #47