I'd post another Redbox pic up here, but I can't access the scanner program while the system is updating or some stuff. I knew I should have clicked on the "remind me later" option. Gahhh well. Since anything from telling you the plot to even revealing what the titular box is would sort of constitute as being spoilers, change of topic.
Topic, topic...
I feel I should really get some work behind me. Practice achieved, and all that. As a daily blogger, do I really expect people to go back into all of the archives? It'd be a tall order. I only skim the blogs of some of the people I actually care about as it is, why would anyone want to delve back into this blog? Though to be fair, I mostly only skim those because I'm busy delving into the archives of their web comics, and not every announcement they have to make alongside the comic would be up-to-date.
Though there are some of those people, the kind where you revel in hanging onto every word they say. I'm not going to be that if no one cares, and no one's going to care if I don't put out professional-quality stuff. That's why I need to practice and get stuff done. Harrumph. That's logic for you, I suppose. (Though there's nothing really logical in that, as logic involves induction and we're not deducing anything new?) That's just good sense, for you, then.
Rewriting Persistence is kind of harder than it sounds, really. Not that it's a chore or anything. That's the point. It's not a chore, is the thing. Cailin's got a real skill with laying out scenes and breathing life into characters. The dialog really sizzles. It's too entertaining to read than to rewrite. I'm not sure if this is self-congratulatory or not, oh ha ha look guys my book's so awesome, but I'm not talking about my own stuff here, so I guess it's okay? She'd be a really skilled screenwriter or something. Yet rewriting is necessary.
Yep, it's the other parts I'm having trouble with. The... sentence structures, and everything. But the rest of it is so good, I'm tempted to ignore the style and just copy-paste it word-for-word, as style is just the way to get to substance and her style seems like the most logical way to get across what she's trying to say. But, still, it just reads like bad fanfiction at some points. In a slush pile, it would scream "amateur." So, rewrite those parts, stepping carefully around the good stuff. I have to thus develop my own hybrid style that fits in not only with her style in the good stuff but also my own style in the scenes not directly from her draft, which also fits lake a frame over her substance in the way that her style did.
It just comes around to the old problem of voice again. You probably remember it; I'm sure I've covered it elsewhere. That the problem of voice isn't a problem; it develops naturally so you just have to trust yourself, and even though that sounds like the moral of a bad direct-to-VHS sequel, it's true in this case. Just... don't worry about voice. It's the natural style to tackle the substance. Though as I think about that that's not really 100% accurate, as there's some kind of intermediary between the style and the substance, the way you tackle how you'll tackle the substance. You have things happening, then you have what to show happening, then you have how to show what to show happening. Things happening: substance; how to show it: style; what to show: ??? Also substance? Though it could be argued as style?
Let's say you were to direct a film version of Rumpelstiltskin. Substance: Rumpelstiltskin. Let's say you use a lot of dutch angles. Clearly, that's a stylistic choice. All well and good (so long as you don't overuse those dutch angles, mister mister! Though it's not like I'm harshing on dutch angles; that could be said of any technique.) All well and good. You decide to tell the story non-linearly, using flashbacks and nested storylines (did I really just have to explain to you what I meant by "non-linearly?") Is this style, or substance? The non-linearity is written into the script. So, substance, right? But it doesn't have to be told non-linearly. Does that make it style?
There's probably someone out there who offers a brilliant theory on this that blasts right the heck through mine; I'm just kind of going to have to break my cardinal rule of always doing the research because it's too goshdarn late as it is, and I'm already forced to backdate this several hours to make it look like I posted this today, that is, Friday instead of Saturday. It's kind of so late at night, it's early in the morning... But I suppose it really wouldn't hurt it any, since I'm already late as it is. To the researchmobile I go.
...
Alright, I'm back. Style vs. substance is also called form against content. Aristotle spoke of lexis and logos; the Romans often wrote of verba and res. I guess that what I'm speaking of would be considered a form of style, but I think this is cutting into it a bit, not splitting hairs but actually carving away until we're left with almost a Platonian cum Levi-Straussian essentially symbolic universe. Hold on, I think that's what I was arguing in the first place...
...
Alright, got it. The Greeks and Romans spoke of form and content only as they applied in logical forensic arguments. Rhetoric, in other words. Although the distinction between form and content is inherently artificial, that's not what I'm talking about. Verbal expression and ideas are fundamentally indivisible, yeah, yeah. That's basic Sapir-Whorf stuff. That's with rhetoric. Pure ideas. In fiction, in a narrative, there's a story. There clearly is a difference between the message and the messenger. The messenger is the guy on horseback galloping into the court, the message is the scroll he's got. Metaphorically, of course.
(Thanks Silva Rhetoricae!)
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