Orson Scott Card

[GrinningDwarf]

Has anybody here checked out Orson Scott Card's website? If you don't already know, he's one of the world's great science fiction writers. He's best known for Ender's Game. (If you havn't read Ender's Game, even if you don't like sci-fi, run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy!!)

Card's website includes a pretty cool 'Writing Class'. He has about 32 'lessons', on all sorts of writing topics. They're all interesting. For one of the lessons, he critiques an actual opening chapter submitted by a new writer that demonstrates common flaws by new writers. Here are the first two paragraphs of Card's critique, for an example:

I can tell you right now, this story is dead in the water because of this most common and most awful of openings. This is the standard "she drove through the snow, tears flowing down her cheeks, thinking through the events of the past few days" opening that wrecks story after story. At least you have the consolation of knowing that everybody else makes this mistake too.


What you're doing with this kind of opening is: You are forcing us to face the character's raw emotions without giving us any information about the story or any reason to care about the character. It is the opposite of how it has to work. We should not face the emotions until we completely understand the entire situation so that we will feel those emotions ourselves -- and then the character does not have to "tremble badly" and waste our time sitting around while memories "storm" through his mind.

http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/1998-11-17.shtml

Card's site is well worth aspiring writers to check out!!

 

[Tariel]

Has anybody here checked out Orson Scott Card's website? If you don't already know, he's one of the world's great science fiction writers. He's best known for Ender's Game. (If you havn't read Ender's Game, even if you don't like sci-fi, run, don't walk to the nearest bookstore and buy a copy!!)

Card's website includes a pretty cool 'Writing Class'. He has about 32 'lessons', on all sorts of writing topics. They're all interesting. For one of the lessons, he critiques an actual opening paragraph submitted by a new writer that demonstrates common flaws by new writers. Here are the first two paragraphs of Card's critique, for an example:



Card's site is well worth aspiring writers to check out!!

looks good....but I should probably wait until sometimes that's not 2:00am-when-I-have-a-class-at-9:00-the-next-morning to check it out.