Ari Bach's Blog

free-and-to-none-accountable:

https://iww.org/membership/

enki2:

Frank Herbert commented on the Butlerian Jihad that he did not think computers were evil, but that they made it too easy for humans to do evil with laziness.

rhaenyrathecool:

?

From a writer friend. We’re all in this together.

I am very sad report that this typo is not in my copy of The Bachman Books (3rd printing NAL hardcover, in chapter five of The Long Walk):

From “Consider This” by Chuck Palahniuk

Stephenie The Nameless: I suppose I’m just aroused by danger.
Kay Slizz: Are you? Well, you know, I’ve been declared a danger to myself and others…

-My next novel maybe

striving-artist:

This isn’t really coherent, I’m just annoyed.

ALTALTALT

First image is a very processed screengrab of a fic, which got under my skin. The next is a somewhat infamous paragraph from Hemmingway. Then there is a part of Dickens’ Bleak House.

I live in a glass house made of compound-complex sentences. But these reach a point, for me, of illegibility. I did a quick count of clauses in these, both dependent and independent. (I am certain my count is wrong bc I haven’t done this since seventh grade, but It’s closeish)

One paragraph from the fic has about 58 in 17 sentences, Hemmingway has 67 in 40 sentences, and Dickens has 56 in 5 fucking sentences. jfc Dickens. They’re all over 400 words.

Melville has a notorious paragraph that is a single sentence and is 471 words long. Machen has a paragraph (412 words) that is 15 sentences and 61 clauses, with 56 in just 12 of them. I just checked one from Austen cause we think of her as verbose, and it was 25 clauses in a 4 sentence paragraph, but… it didn’t feel oppressive to me.

The point, which I sort of lost track of as I stared at grammar rules, is that Paragraphs Matter and also Please Use Them. It doesn’t make you seem like a more mature writer to writer walls of text. Normally we talk about wall of text issues bc there isn’t an indent or a line after a paragraph to help your eye separate it, but its definitely this too.

I have always despised Hemmingway despite writing in a not-dissimilar style. He mixes sentence lengths, and intercuts with more casual commentary. I don’t enjoy his subject matter, but if the man ever used the return key, I’d have given him leeway. Since I had the text for Hemmingway, I went in and hit enter wherever I would tone shift or pause if I was reading it aloud. It became 11 paragraphs. I hate this section less now.

The longest single paragraph in Machen’s “The White People” is over 5,600 words long. The ones before and after it are also in the thousands. I have ‘read’ that book but I skimmed the fuck out of parts and feel NO guilt.

fyrasha:

natalieironside:

Nona the Ninth is the sort of book Robert Heinlein could’ve written if he’d just quit whining and taken the estrogen

galaxy-brained take, honestly

Why Violet has a Glaswegian accent:

I think that is “Oh, let him go, he is off his head.”

From “The Wasp Factory” by Iain Banks, a Scottish author.