Common mistakes in writing

[Marcus15]

Originally Posted by pyan

(read the stickies first!),(link)and you'll get feedback.

As soon as I can get my files off my flash drive I shall. Vista won't recognise my U3 drive.

[Ivaron]

I think I can safely say I've never fallen into the trap known as POV. But I was wondering, Raymond E. Feist does seem to use POV at certain times and it's sometimes actually refreshing when this happens.
Only the way he does it is, he has the viewpoint character leave the scene, then the other characters (usually two) discuss with each other about the previous viewpoint character.
It happens within one paragraph, though. Personally, I prefer reading this to having a new paragraph that still happens within the same scene.
I guess another good way of doing it is have a completely new scene with another character thinking about what happened earlier.

But anyway, what do you guys think about the way Feist handles it, and would you say it's "okay" to do or should be steered clear of?

Originally Posted by dwndrgn

Well, it is interesting, and I've seen quite a bit of the terms mentioned; however, some of it just doesn't make sense to me. It is quite possible that this is true because I'm not a writer - though one would think that an avid reader like myself would be able to understand this kind of thing even if I couldn't put it to use. Particularly puzzling are these:

The Motherhood Statement
SF story which posits some profoundly unsettling threat to the human condition, explores the implications briefly, then hastily retreats to affirm the conventional social and humanistic pieties, ie apple pie and motherhood. Greg Egan once stated that the secret of truly effective SF was to deliberately "burn the motherhood statement." (Attr. Greg Egan)

I also don't get this one. Could someone explain it?

Squid on the Mantelpiece
Chekhov said that if there are dueling pistols over the mantelpiece in the first act, they should be fired in the third. In other words, a plot element should be deployed in a timely fashion and with proper dramatic emphasis. However, in SF plotting the MacGuffins are often so overwhelming that they cause conventional plot structures to collapse. It's hard to properly dramatize, say, the domestic effects of Dad's bank overdraft when a giant writhing kraken is levelling the city. This mismatch between the conventional dramatic proprieties and SF's extreme, grotesque, or visionary thematics is known as the "squid on the mantelpiece."

I think what they mean to say is, if you have a really powerful weapon or character in your book, you either need to use him ASAP or you're gonna need a very convincing reason why he's not getting involved.
For instance, look at Marvel Comics. They had a series where Superman teamed up with less powerful characters such as Batman etc. They had to come up with a reason why Superman couldn't save the day in every episode, or else the other guys had nothing to do.

False Humanity
An ailment endemic to genre writing, in which soap-opera elements of purported human interest are stuffed into the story willy-nilly, whether or not they advance the plot or contribute to the point of the story. The actions of such characters convey an itchy sense of irrelevance, for the author has invented their problems out of whole cloth, so as to have something to emote about.

Robert Jordan, anyone? This one has ruined alot of otherwise good books for me.

[Precision Grace]

Hi, newby here. This is such an interesting thread and will be very useful in the future. It did make me laugh though. You see, I came here looking for advice and information, having written something that is completely crazy and that I didn't know what to make of. It turns out, I wrote an unwitting example of all the common mistakes in sci-fi writing! I best get on with reading this forum and hopefully find a way to write a little less appallingly

[chopper]

and that, ladies & genuflections, is precisely what we are here for!

[Thadlerian]

Originally Posted by Ivaron

I also don't get this one. Could someone explain it?

I think the Motherhood Statement point is a rather polemic way of saying that when stories reach a point (usually near the story climax) where something truly reality-changing is discovered/created, writers refuse to contemplate these changes. Instead, they find some kind of emergency exit that allows them to disregard having brought the thing to our attention.

Example: Someone find a machine that can produce food in near infinite amounts, enough to feed all of humanity for ever. Unfortunately, the machine self-destructs, and humanity is left fending for itself, like it has always done. We never get to see what the world would really be like if all food was free.

The Motherhood Statement allows writers to profit from single, wild ideas, without having to pay the price of thinking through the consequences of the ideas.

For examples, consider the ending of Iain M. Banks' Excession. Or Michael Crichton's Sphere.

[Precision Grace]

Not sure if this has been posted before, but I only just found it and it made me laugh and think of this thread.

The Fantasy Novelist's Exam

[The Ace]

The one that gets up my nose is two, to, and too.

Two = a number.
To = the opposite of, 'From.'
Too = 'Excessively,' or, 'As well as..'

Obviously, this can cause confusion in someone whose native language isn't english BUT ANY NATIVE SPEAKER MAKING SUCH A MISTAKE SHOULD BE BOILED IN OIL !!!!!!!!!!!!