Home The Author The Book Reviews FAQs More Stuff The Other Side


BLOG

RSS Feed 

Thursday, October 25, 2007

 

Another Lexicon phrase

Advertising Memo

A remark made by one of the characters in which the author tries to convince the readers that the story is going great, such as 'It's like something out of a film!' or 'He'd make a great character in a novel!'.

Surprisingly common even in otherwise good pieces, this one.

Comments:
I agree that that can be a cliche but I don't think the intent is to suggest that the story is going great but more about how we observe our existence through the medium of mediums, we walk about and imagine a soundtrack (if we don't have one on our ipod) we see a great view and we imagine the camera panning along it, we meet an interesting person and we see them as a character in a novel rather than a person.

Often done very clumsily I agree but with our increasingly more and more media saturated world such cliches are more and more accurate and realistic in describing our lives, what I'd like is for people to find new and exciting ways to express this.
 
It isn't even always in dialog. Sometimes it's in the narrative. Like this:

The whole situation was so amazing, it was like something out of a science fiction film, but Bill knew it was really happening to him.

I hate it when people do this. It throws me right straight out of the book.
 
Sometimes It's used as a cheat to get past what I call The Disbelief Turnstile, ie that part in the story where your character has to believe something is actually happening and isn't a dream /a con/ a symptom of madness. The turnstile's horribly necessary but very tedious, especially in shows where a character is helping different people with their weird abilities each week and has to convince them in different ways every time. Drawing attention to the weirdness of it sometimes allows you to dismiss this bit for some reason.
 
Ooh, that's a good phrase. Can I add it to the Lexicon next time I update? (Full credit to you, obviously.)
 
But of course. Might want to give it a new title as I'm not sure if it's really a turnstile, as several people can go through it simultaneously.
 
I like turnstile, it's nice and clear. :-)
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

Archives

July 2006   August 2006   September 2006   October 2006   November 2006   December 2006   January 2007   February 2007   March 2007   April 2007   May 2007   June 2007   July 2007   August 2007   September 2007   October 2007   November 2007   December 2007   January 2008   February 2008   March 2008   April 2008   May 2008   June 2008   July 2008   August 2008   September 2008   October 2008   November 2008   December 2008   January 2009   February 2009   March 2009   April 2009   May 2009   June 2009   July 2009   August 2009   September 2009   October 2009   November 2009   December 2009   January 2010   February 2010   March 2010   April 2010   May 2010  

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?