Specccie Number2846 The write stuff
 

I shall lie doggo and see what other people do. I forgot to say by 30 April. If anyone knows how to do that, do it friend.

No. 2846: the write stuff


George Orwell’s famous six rules for writing have been doing the rounds on Twitter. You are invited to invent the six rules for writing of a well-known author, living or dead, of your choice. Please email entries of up to 150 words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 April.

This is depressingly similar to Comp. 2740, which was based on Henry Miller's "Work commandments". Apparently, it's not only competitors who go in for a spot of recycling.

For ease of reference, here are Orwell's rules:

1 Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2 Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3 If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4 Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5 Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6 Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

Orwell's rules wouldn't work very well for Nabokov. In fact Nabokov hated Orwell. And it would doubtless have been vicde-versa had Orwell lived long enough.

A competition! Write Lolita in the style of Orwell. Nabokov has already rewritten 1984. I think Bend Sinister is better.

Orwell's rules seem pretty tongue in cheek to me - the last is simply absurd. Win or lose, I am really going to go to town on this comp.

William Faulkner's Six Rules for Writing:

1. Never write a clear sentence.

2. Never attach a relative clause not succeeded by a sequence of a dozen more of increasing complexity

3. Never write more than six pages without the appearance, at least once, of the word: "inviolate"

4. Never clarify place, time and person

5. Never conclude the story at the conclusion

6. Never imply that the race might survive the modern world.

T.S. Eliot's Six Rules for Writing

1. Look on the world with the eyes of a saurian.
2. Write a few lines in a manner Victorian.
3. Fill them with languor and well-bred futility.
4. Hammering Jews has undoubted utility.
5. Old stuff in Sanskrit is good to come out with.
6. Send it to Ezra to bugger about with.

Bend Sinister actually came out before 1984 and is the better piece of literature by far. Orwell's novel is probably more important than Nabokov's because it introduced the world to Big Brother and Newspeak, but its biggest flaw is its lack of humor. Nabokov knew that corrupt and oppressive governments are also ridiculous and funny. Just think of that news item floating around last week about the 9-month-old boy charged with attempted murder and political upheaval by the Pakistani government. Or Putin as parody of machismo. Or Kim Jong-il being himself.

Ah, Orwn, but is importance so very important? An English philosopher said that.n a good day I could tell you who.

I love the bit in BS where the Professorial hero, urged to sign a petition, says he never appends his signature to anything he hs not himself written.

Samuel Beckett
1: Subtract from stream of consciousness until a trickle.
2: Set light, weather, scenery, backstory at absolute minimum.
3: Have your narrator doubt everything, own existence first and especially.
4: Have him or her - probably him: doesn't matter - perform philosophical or arithmetical contortions to reach wrong or (preferably) no answer.
5: Sparingly deploy odd words to suggest flavour; viduity, goitre and the like
6: Fizzle out.

James Joyce:

1. Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenth ur-
nuk!
2. Be a tegotetabsolver!
3. Be an earwitness to the thunder of arafatas.
4. Mind your hats goan in!
5. Make strake for minnas!
6. Avoid excessive adverbs.

Admirably concise, and made me chuckle!

This turned out not to be any good, so I've removed it. Serves me right for writing under the influence.

1: Start writing.
2: Keep writing.
3: Yes, I know you want to stop writing, but don't
4: No, it doesn't have to make any sense just to long as you keep writing.
5: Any language will do. Or an invented one. Or any combination thereof.
6: Continue until quite mad.

And that's how Finnegans' Wake got written.

Somebody ought to be able to do something with Dan Brown. It won't be me, because I can never get beyond his first horrible paragraph.

Ivy Compton Burnett
1: 'A large country house' is sufficient scene setting to satisfy anyone.
2: Since their behaviour will do more to homogenise them than their features differentiate, describe your characters precisely once and none too well.
3: When it comes to dialogue - and it does, almost entirely - imagine that you are writing Wildeian epigrams from which most of the humour has been subtracted. This is certainly how your readers will experience it.
4: There should be incidents in your novel but they should not be unduly emphasised: infanticide is no more worthy of note than a butler coming in from the pantry.
5: In many scenes, have a number of characters speaking at once in the same manner, so that it is difficult to identify who is saying what to whom. It will give readers precisely the headache they deserve.
6: The only father worth having is a cruel father. God set the example with aplomb; follow it in all your novels.

I am tempted to do Dan Brown, particularly as Adrian has already broken his proposed moratorium on over-parodied authors by doing Beckett (albeit very well).

Harold Pinter

1) Plays should always be set in drab, mid-twentieth century working-class interiors. The days of Oscar Wilde are long gone, chum.
2) Dialogue should be as free of content as possible, as this extract from my celebrated play ‘The Cupboard Under the Stairs’ demonstrates:
Terry: What do you want?
Frank: Nothing.
Pause.
Terry: Must want something.
Pause.
Frank: Not particularly.
Terry: Oh.
This was praised by the Telegraph as ‘brilliantly contrived’ and by the Times as ‘vivid and earthy’.
3) Use... lots... of... ellipses. This saves you the trouble of having to think up complete and coherent sentences.
4) Try and avoid the story having a clear beginning or end.
5) Or indeed middle.
6) If your play entertains the audience, it’s failed.

Mary Whitehouse

1) Terms such as ‘b*tt*m’, ‘bl*st’, ‘d*mn’ and ‘anilingus’ should never be allowed to appear in any poem, play or novel on pain of our children growing up to become atheist thugs who listen to ‘pop’ music.
2) Some words, such as ‘dictation’, ‘shyster’ and ‘quinquireme’ sound dirty, but aren’t. Their use should be prohibited nevertheless for fear that young people, in misinterpreting their meanings, may become aroused and commit acts of sexual perversity.
3) And ‘mastication.’
4) Don’t pander to the disgraceful fashion of ‘knocking’ the police.
5) Do not mention wood, objects made of wood, or people/characters called Wood. Our Lord Jesus Christ died on a crucifix made of wood, so any such reference is clearly blasphemous.
6) Do not look to the Bible for guidance. It’s full of filth. Adam and Eve’s nudity, to choose just one instance, is entirely gratuitous and in extremely poor taste.

Sorry to be picky, Adrian, but add another "o" to that last "to" before you submit.

You are all so GOOD at this and literarily knowing. My envy is great!

Thank you, Lois; I certainly will.

Dan Brown

1) Use dynamic verbs. Invent your own if necessary. Why have someone ‘drive’ a car when they can ‘gun it up the street’?
2) Chase sequences are a swell opportunity for characters to reflect appreciatively on local art and architecture as they dodge bullets.
3) Europe is a great place to set stories. It’s real sophisticated and old, and most Americans don’t know it too well so you can pretty much claim what the heck you like about it.
4) Criminals should always be thoughtful enough to leave a trail of elaborately coded clues to their dastardly plots.
5) Don’t waste time reading the works of key historical figures as research. Some of this stuff is real hard because it’s written in European. One word: Wikipiedia!
6) Don’t listen to critics. They don’t know anything. Well, actually they do, but most of the public don’t, and that’s all that matters.

John, I thought your T.S. Eliot superb, incidentally. I'd be very surprised if you weren't a winner with that (but what do I know?) I can't for the life of me figure out the saurian reference, though.

Thank you, Rob. I knew what I meant when I wrote it but I've forgotten. I'll get back to you on it.

Emily Dickinson’s Rules for Writing:

1.−Tell it slant−
2. Capitalize−common Nouns−
3. Make the Lexicon− your only Companion−
4. –Dabble in linguistic surprise−
5.−Make the Abstract tangible−
6 .−Dwell in Possibility−

Rob. I think 'saurian' is really about the way Eliot always seems so OLD, not to his actual appearance. Old and cold, don't you know. Does tht make sense?

Not sure, John. Seems a tad obscure to me.

C’mon, now -- if Eliot doesn’t seem lizard-y, are Radcliffe and Smith and McKellen not wizard-y?

O Rob, all this OLD stuff... an old man in a dry month... why should the aged eagle stretch his wings...I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.. and dry stuff too... and desert stuff ... dust, dust, dust of dust..

Lizardy. Definitely. Tennyson is wizardy.

Fair enough.

Eliot's world-weary whinge, 'Why should the aged eagle spread his wings?' got short shrift from Edmund Wilson, who pointed out that the poet was barely in his 40s at the time.

John, perhaps you were thinking of William Plomer's 'The Playboy of the Demi World: 1938'?

D'Arcy Honeybunn has 'The eyes of some old saurian in decay'

Hemingway’s six rules for writing:

1. Suggest the fishing rod’s a penis
2. Suggest the fishing lure’s a penis
3. Suggest the mountain trout’s a penis
4. Suggest that Jake has lost his penis
5. Suggest that Brett has found a penis
6. Suggest a police baton’s a penis

Well, I wasn't, Jerome, but it's a nice quote.

Hemingway was a prick, wasn't he?

I can hardly wait to plagiarize this line for a sonnet.