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RE: The Club and The Ballroom, a WeWrite
Reading your entry, I see once again what an unmeasurable abyss separates the native from a nonnative speaker. Your phases are so much more flexible and the word usage is so gentle, rich and, at the same time, precise as if you are doing the open-heart surgery on the body of the story.
For example, "squalid place".
(of a place) extremely dirty and unpleasant, especially as a result of poverty or neglect.
I never heard of this word before. Yet, what is especially priceless is that out of all the possible synonyms describing the same thing you pick the word that is most precise and the most fitting stylistically by ear. This seamless aerobatics is what makes every "friking fernet" envious. )))
YES - @owasco is a pro at eamless prose and choosing exactly the right word.
Precise. No excess verbiage. Prose that is pleasing to the ear!
With so many writers, even published, even NYT best selling authors, I find prose that rolls like a square wheel. It just grates on my ears. These are native English speakers, too.
Poets write the best prose. And maybe musicians -- those who hear the cadence, the rhythm, those who may think to read their words out loud (for only themselves to endure!) - #ReadingOutLoud is a painful tool but great for making you see if your prose is clumsy or full of words that could pruned out.
Excellent commentary, @mgaft1, on an excellent story!
I love, love, love the true-life story of the Roseland Ballroom! Thanks for including the history, @owasco!
woman you know I love you right?
This is the first time I ever researched something to fit it into a story. I knew I wanted their names in white punched black tape (so Mr. and Mrs Edgar Viscardo are up there twice), and thought that would be easy, but the timeline of Roseland had me switching things up quite a bit. So now Edgar and Elsie have had to meet when they are in their thirties and forties, will have had no children of their own but be very close to cousins and such. It was an interesting exercise and helped me the author be less in charge of the action in the story.
I keep a strict limit of 500 words for wewrite stories and write them in wordcounter. (This one may be a few words over I made some edits without checking in word counter first) This super helps with economy of word and especially thought. There can be nothing extraneous or gratuitous if you want to get a story told in 500 words or less. It's fun to go through and cull the diversions out.
Thank for that #readingoutloud tip. I'll check it out.
xo
OMG I forgot about the word limit!
500 words
Oh man I blew it. Off to go count my words, AFTER I posted 'em.
Nothing gratuitous! I am doomed!
Thank you for the kind words and your encouragement, and I love your research and the way you let the story reshape itself as needed to fit the form... 500 words, I forgot, I forgot, but you did not - I have much to learn. Thank you again!!
I don't think it's a hard and fast rule, just more of a courtesy! You won't be disqualified! Oh I have so many wewrites to read. I think I've read two of them so far this week.
I'm so far behind too - but I did revise mine down to 500 words. Thank you. Less is more!
Will we ever get caught up reading...
There are days I can't bear to read another blog post, and somehow I still read just a couplethree more.
I actually READ the pieces I upvote and comment on. Every. Single. One.
People comment on posts they haven't read?
Oh my.
I've been guilty of speed reading and missing a detail here and there, but not to read it at all - well, that would explain the excess of brief comments like "Great story."
Oh dear. As if reading and catching isn't daunting enough, being obligated to offer PROOF of having read the whole thing would really scare off commenters, wouldn't it?
Better to read a few in-depth than to skim a multitude, right?
It's far more satisfying than skimming. I learn a lot here. Obsessed with reading these blogs I am. Too bad it doesn't pay off unless you're a skimmer.
Yeah @carolkean. I know the good stuff once I see it. Now and then I read some stuff where it makes me cringe stylistically. And then you read @owasco and it's like a balm on your wounds. )))
Oh my goodness! like a balm on your wounds I'm delighted with this comment!
Great line - and well earned!
Wow thank you! Interesting comment @magaft! I revise and revise my non-freewrite stuff so that they will be more readable for a non-native speaker. Sometimes I have to leave a turn of phrase as is, knowing it will not be understood, just because it's so perfect - colloquiallisms can say the unsayable. But for the most part I try to be so grammatically simple that all of the ESL readers on steem are not confused.
Also interesting that you choose the word "squalid" to talk about. That word was slow in coming to me and made its way into the story towards the end of my two days of putting this thing together. I probably even found it finally when I looked something else up in a thesaurus.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments! And of course for your continued support of my musings.
Don't take me wrong. It's readable. But it's more like LOUIS XIII cognac than a Budwiser. I read it slowly and enjoy every little gulp. )))
Again with the high praise! I'm blushing! Thank you for taking that time.