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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Blunders Abound

As a writer, I can't help judging other writers' work as I read. That just comes along with the territory. It's both eye-opening and disappointing to discover how many published---even famous!---writers aren't always quite up to snuff. Not that I'm perfect, either; we all have our own strengths and weaknesses.

I hope he'll forgive me for mentioning this, but one of the pieces read at the most recent Readercon's Bad Prose Contest was from a story written by Terry Goodkind ( author of The Sword of Truth series ). And it was awful, ie: "he heard the sound of a screech". Really?

I've read a couple of Terry's books, and they were nowhere near that bad. Maybe he wrote the above-mentioned piece on a really bad day---we all have them. And I've written a few lines myself that were downright laughable; for instance: "grasping his dar-dul'adz firmly in his right hand..." What!? My three kids rolled on the floor laughing at that one; I promptly changed it. ( NB: it's always a good idea to have someone else check your work with a fresh eye and an open mind to avoid blunders like that. )

I've caught a few faux pas in other people's work that they somehow missed---just a matter of the wrong juxtaposition of words or phrases---wish I could remember some of them. They can be amusing to hilarious. But I find that if the story is really good, I'm more than willing to forgive a few errors---as long as they're minor. One notorious example of a whopping blunder was found in a fantasy written, I believe, by Lin Carter, where the hero's magic sword is captured---and several chapters later, with absolutely no explanation, the hero miraculously has his sword back again! Unforgiveable.

Hoping I'm never guilty of a blunder that blatant!

MRTighe

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