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- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!slc3.ins.cwru.edu!agate!rsoft!mindlink!a710
- From: Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian)
- Newsgroups: misc.writing
- Subject: Re: Language Lists (was Re: Work in Progress: Proposal
- Message-ID: <14588@mindlink.bc.ca>
- Date: 26 Aug 92 03:11:56 GMT
- Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
- Distribution: world
- Lines: 13
-
- Now I know how Dr. Frankenstein felt...but this kind of discussion is just what
- SF is all about.
-
- Bear in mind that most of the world-creating a writer does will never really
- figure in the finished text. It may give the world more solidity in the
- writer's imagination, but if it doesn't move the story forward, out it goes.
-
- In Chekhov's The Sea Gull, the hero (a writer) reads a rival's work and chokes
- with envy on the rival's ability to evoke a scene with two or three tiny
- details. That should be enough in SF or any other genre as well. Of course, in
- SF or fantasy you can sometimes shovel all your notes into a set of appendices,
- like Orwell or Tolkien. If you're really lucky, though, your editor won't let
- you.
-