Just had the strangest back to back of weeks. A fortnight ago I had a week off work and spent most of it with with a migraine and not sleeping good and kinda miserable
Just this last week was back @ work and slept well, and was relatively headache free (I feel at my age and stage in life its weird if there is nothing out of sorts with my body or mind at any point in time).
That’s not usually the way of things!
Anyway it’s a writing round up not a whinging one! (honestly I’ve actually seen many a writer’s blog go down that route and I’m not keen)
Now I’m going to say something honest about Terrible Writing Advice. I love the conceit, I love sarcasm and I love poking fun at bad writing. In fact one of the first books On Writing I grabbed was “How Not to Write A Novel” However I rarely watch a whole video to TWA through because my sarcasm tolerance gets low!
Still it’s worth a watch as you never know what good ideas spring up from viewing bad ones.
So I really like this video, but its interesting to me that many people when talking about plot holes get hung up on very pragmatic or technical issues. IMO Not all Plot Holes are Created Equal meaning that its less worrisome when there is some kind of pragmatic error or whatever, but very worrisome when a character is mis-portrayed or the theme of the story gets disrupted.
For example the OP Youtuber points out that the magic lady is shown at times without her necklace and then at a later scene takes her necklace off and is revealed as an old lady. Bear in mind this was across many seasons of television! To me this doesn’t change anything that we’re supposed to worry or care about this character or what’s going on in the story, its literally just a brief mistake. Now mistakes can be a problem if every single reader is spotting them and getting mad, but to me I’m more worried about things like when a character suddenly makes a poor choice to keep the plot moving, or the conclusion of the story contradicts the ‘lessons’ we’re taught on the way.
An interesting question posed on Reddit, aside from the obvious paradox of if a Mary Sue ‘works’ they probably aren’t
(for anyone wondering a Mary Sue is a trope of a basically perfect character, except its not just they themselves that are perfection the entire world and plot bends around them perfectly so nothing ever goes wrong for them. E.g. if a tension isn’t resolved by Mary Sue’s perfect intellect, social skills, or whatever, other characters, and even the environment bend over backwards to make things work out)
Having an OP (overpowered) work in a story is actually a great writing exercise, there are many options, e.g. making the tension about how other non-perfect characters feel, or the conflict about the one thing that Mary Sue can’t change or have Mary Sue be the villain!
Just to shine my own boots with this one, I feel this is a piece of writing advice I ‘get,’ The OP is confused by the metaphor because its on an essay about writer’s motives.
This is interesting because I think the window metaphor is easy to misunderstand. Many writers have this perception that their story magically exists somehow already and their words are the ‘windowpane’ That’s not the actual metaphor here. Your words ARE the story the ‘prose’ is a potential barrier in the story, you don’t want the reader getting distracted by a window pane that draws attention to itself (or is so dirty and smudgy you can’t see through it).
The reason its about motive is that if you are a writer wanting people to notice your prose, its like a window ‘wanting’ to be seen.
Yes the story does exist in your head, but your prose isn’t a window into your brain for a reader to see that story, I think the true metaphoric goal is to have the reader standing right there IN your story not even looking through a window!
Pretty sure we talked about this one recently already! (the algorhythm is listening)
I feel that misdirection is something best placed in rewrites, or at least when the story is well planned out. Because I tend to “vomit draft” (and then move onto the next vomit draft LOL) this is the sort of thing I need to work one more.
Alright I think that might do for this post!
Any writing related material you think I should share?
Any thoughts on the ideas above?
Lonely Power Poles 
On “Good Prose Is Like A Windowpane”
Interesting. My thought (possibly because I’ve heard about it before and vaguely remembered) was that it was about a combination of establishing the viewpoint (framing) and not getting in the way (cleanness).
It’s probably also influenced by a photography/cinematography perspective (how are you looking at this scene?), but a foggy/dirty window could also be used intentionally (e.g. to emphasise an unreliable narrator).
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How you frame / establish viewpoint I like that – makes more sense
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