[ SECRET POST #1959 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1959 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 085 secrets from Secret Submission Post #280.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

I think there can be an objective standard in quality if you look at how successful a thing is at what it's trying to do? A furniture manual with clear, comprehensible instructions and nice diagrams is better than a furniture manual that's barely comprehensible. A novel is better or worse depending on what it's trying to do. Things like "is it compelling" or "are the characters interesting" are at least partly down to taste, not quality, but there's a lot that isn't. There's consistency, and general guidelines for plotting and effective prose that are there because they work.

[(Anonymous)]

da

I'd say those "guidelines" are just tools that the author can choose to use if s/he wishes. They aren't an automatic shoe-in for "quality". If they were what would become of talent and practice? Just because many authors use certain sets of guidelines (though probably not exactly the same ones across the board) doesn't mean that's what determines quality.

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

If having rules in place means talent and practice don't matter, then anybody can be excellent at math without even trying. Oh, wait.

Things like "the characters are acting in a way that makes sense for who they are and what's going on", "the events in a given part of a story don't clash with the intended mood," "if a piece of text can't directly be attributed to a character that would have a bad grasp of spelling and grammar, it has correct spelling and generally appropriate grammar to the tone", "the setting itself doesn't give the impression that it revolves around the protagonist, unless there's a plot reason for why it actually does," "important plot threads aren't forgotten, even if they don't have closure by the end of the story," etc, those things actually do determine the quality of a story. If the mood's shitting off to a bunch of torture and murder in a supposedly light and fluffy story, or the author's sentence structure is nigh-incomprehensible, it's not going to be as good, sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not going to be as good because people don't like it when it's done that way. That's why.

Also, the arts and math are very different things - math doesn't have "works" which people consume for enjoyment. It's a science. Of course there are rules and rights/wrongs. Science is concerned with facts. Art is not.

[drunken-clowns.livejournal.com]

You don't think there's any real value in internal consistency and using the language in a way that the readers can make sense of? Really? People like these things because a story that's not intended to confuse is better enjoyed in a non-confusing format. I don't like the "consumer of media as creative collaborator" views, but I think a reader's experience IS a part of that work. It's not necessarily that (in an English-language work) proper English is better in itself, it's that if you don't want to confuse, it makes fucking sense to structure your prose within the bounds of how English speakers have been taught to understand words.

Of course it's different, but that's not the point- the point is that talent and practice still apply when strict rules exist, so they can still apply when looser rules that leave room for style and content exist. Also, certain math geeks I know would probably have something to say about the idea that math stuff is never an art.