John Scalzi: The New Comprehensible, or, This is Not a Literary Manifesto, Thank God.
Now, let’s say that at this point, some writer out there is saying “Hey, I want to be part of this New Comprehensible movement in science fiction that I’ve heard so much about in the last four paragraphs,” and wanted advice on how he or she might go about doing it. What advice should this person be given? Well, manifestos are not my thing, but basic, practical advice? I can do that. Here’s what I would suggest, and it’s really rather simple:
1. Think of an actual person you know, of reasonable intelligence, who likes to read but does not read science fiction.
2. Write with that person in mind.
That’s all you do.
9 replies on “Comprehensible”
Yes, I see the point, but who would want to read that?
Now THIS I could sell tickets to.
What? What? What happen there? Cite is not what I think it is?
Fuck this WP shit!
There’s no cite tag in the WP tag-whitelist, there is Q and BLOCKQUOTE, both with an attribute of “cite”.
The formatting of the instructions is misleading.
Misleading format? Otisville?
The instructions say, I quote and pardon me for using the good old annotation: “You can use these tags”. While this is not an outright fallacy (one can indeed use those tags, as I did), it is far more than a format problem.
Indeed, WordPress sucketh a great deal, in many diverse ways and from many a different angles.
I’d read New Comprehensible sci-fi.
I think i would.
Stop dissing WP, dude. It’s Dothan’s bizarre theme that put the misleading helpline there.
Any system of government that allows Dothan’s bizarre theme is unfit for rullage on account of its extreme suckation, or suckotage or something.
Blogging software. I meant blogging software.
And go read Dune instead. Is better. Better than WP, anyway.
Now look what you made me do – I installed another plugin