Preview More Cyclopean Writing

[Jason]

Tags: Cyclopean; Iron Tower

Iron Tower's Scott provided another <b><a href="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=485.0" target="blank">Cyclopean</a></b> writing example, <a href="http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=836.0" target="blank">"The Curious Manuxet Medicine Man"</a>.
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<blockquote>Against all sense fascinated, I turned my eyes to the space before them. They stood within a depressed circle several yards across, scorched black at the edges as if by a single massive stroke of lightning. Within, the earth had been scoured away to the depth of about a foot, revealing the yellow clay which underlies the topsoil in these parts. At the center was a perfectly round stone platform, inscribed at the perimeter with a sequence of rough-carved sigils the meaning of which I know not. At the center was an image only slightly less mysterious: an eye perhaps two feet across with an hourglass-shaped pupil, like that of a goat. A few inches above this eye, without apparent source, danced a wavering green flame.</blockquote>

 

[Murk]

Having recently read some short weird stories of Lovecraft, I'd say the writing is pretty damn close if not on the spot to his style.

 

[Jaesun]

That writing gave me a gigantic Lovecraftian hard on!

 

[BeholderX]

I had thought there to be much work to do with Indian treaties

At the time I had little in the way of name or fortune, and in point of fact, still do not.

Due a facility with languages

these mostly involved treating with local Indian tribes

Manley is a man of much influence whose name I myself have heard bruited about London whenever the Colonies were mentioned.

Deerfield is a bustling little community... The settlement had grown in expanding rings...

I am charged no rent, so cannot complain.

many men out on trap lines, trading missions of their own, or preparing camp for the season ahead.

The twin disfigurements brought a horrible image to mind... If the tribal scarring is meant to be frightful, it does its job admirably.

our unflagging guides harried us on until we waited

More odd

Finding myself in the man’s presence I was quick to understand why he inspired tall tales, and fear, and now I suspect most of all, jealousy.

His face was likely quite handsome before it was disfigured with the scarring common to his people.

The voice itself is of remarkable timber

Misquamacus, four of his advisors, and I sat ranged ourselves

armoury... laboring...rumour...honour... fulfill

only slightly less mysterious

I was not the lone unwilling guest

and then I got too frustrated to continue.

I don't know why somebody without a basic grasp on grammar and a solid command of anspect, tense and mode thinks himself capable of professional writing, but he should stop ASAP before he makes a total fool of himself.

 

[bat_boro]

It was actually a good read.

 

[Brother None]

I don't know why somebody without a basic grasp on grammar and a solid command of anspect, tense and mode thinks himself capable of professional writing, but he should stop ASAP before he makes a total fool of himself.

So, uh, when you read a Clockwork Orange, were you all like "I don't know why someone with such an inaccurate vocabulary would pretend to be a professional writer, he should give up and kill himself"?

 

[xuerebx]

I don't know why somebody without a basic grasp on grammar and a solid command of anspect, tense and mode thinks himself capable of professional writing, but he should stop ASAP before he makes a total fool of himself.

So, uh, when you read a Clockwork Orange, were you all like "I don't know why someone with such an inaccurate vocabulary would pretend to be a professional writer, he should give up and kill himself"?

Haha, what a good comparison!

 

[BeholderX]

So, uh, when you read a Clockwork Orange, were you all like "I don't know why someone with such an inaccurate vocabulary would pretend to be a professional writer, he should give up and kill himself"?

Right, because the speech situation of an overschooled 18th-century young English lawyer processing frontier experiences in his diary is completely comparable to the colloquial Anglo-Russian ramblings of a teenage delinquent in a post-modern dystopia. Well argued!

This kind of constant aspect confusion and misuse of the progressive is usually only found in experimental hyper-realistic writing (which isn't such a great fit with Lovecraftian horror) or in bad fan-fiction; probably because anybody with a sensibility for language would immediately cringe at a construction like "our unflagging guides harried us on until we waited".
Let's just agree that the guy wouldn't be up to professional standards and that this is just an amateur project, then we won't have to argue anymore

 

[Forest Dweller]

 

[ghostdog]

What the fuck? Your main problems is that:

TThis kind of constant aspect confusion and misuse of the progressive is usually only found in experimental hyper-realistic writing (which isn't such a great fit with Lovecraftian horror)

Did you try to publish some kind of novel , failed and now you express your butthurt with this paranoid nitpicking?

 

[Azarkon]

Not racist enough to be Lovecraft.

 

[Darth Roxor]

niggah stole my image :!:

 

[BeholderX]

What the fuck? Your main problems is that:

TThis kind of constant aspect confusion and misuse of the progressive is usually only found in experimental hyper-realistic writing (which isn't such a great fit with Lovecraftian horror)

Did you try to publish some kind of novel , failed and now you express your butthurt with this paranoid nitpicking?

I was humorously insinuating that the author was just trying to be realistic by having a classically educated Englishman write like a teenager who just scraped through community college. But it's more likely that he was straining so hard to emulate Lovecraft's antiquated style that he forgot about silly things like grammar and AmE/BrE distinction.

And this is now my favourite passage:

and our jack-of-all-trades Hanson as my bodyguard. Hanson is large and physically intimidating, but as he is also a deaf-mute he will be of no use during negotiations.

(also I've already had "some kind of novel" published, so nyah!)

 

[MisterStone]

BX is right, the writing is pretty off.

 

[JarlFrank]

(also I've already had "some kind of novel" published, so nyah!)

Link or it didn't happen.

 

[Darth Roxor]

 

[asper]

I had thought there to be much work to do with Indian treaties

Manley is a man of much influence whose name I myself have heard bruited about London whenever the Colonies were mentioned.

Deerfield is a bustling little community... The settlement had grown in expanding rings...

The twin disfigurements brought a horrible image to mind... If the tribal scarring is meant to be frightful, it does its job admirably.

His face was likely quite handsome before it was disfigured with the scarring common to his people.

The voice itself is of remarkable timber

What is wrong with these sentences?

 

[Kingston]

Huge butthurt over some other guy's butthurt witnessed.

So yea, no need to get your pants in a twist just because someone is criticizing Vince's game. Criticism is supposed to be the backbone of the Codex (more like butthurt is the backbone of the Codex).

Oh yea, writing look alright to me. It seems to have a bit of a forced air, but I don't really mind.

 

[Vault Dweller]

First, it's not Vince's game. Second, criticism should be backed up by some arguments, should it not? I must confess that I don't see anything wrong with most of these sentences. They sound properly and authentically archaic to my heathen, "non-native English speaker" ear. I'd say that Scott's writing style is pretty damn close to Lovecraft's, but maybe that's just me.

Overall, even if the text contains some mistakes and typos (after all, it's a forum post, not a published and properly edited novel), I don't think that the initial comment - "somebody without a basic grasp on grammar and a solid command of anspect, tense and mode thinks himself capable of professional writing, but he should stop ASAP before he makes a total fool of himself" - is justified.

 

[DefJam101]

Arguments are not necessary when you've published some kind of novel.

 

[BeholderX]

I had thought there to be much work to do with Indian treaties

Manley is a man of much influence whose name I myself have heard bruited about London whenever the Colonies were mentioned.

Deerfield is a bustling little community... The settlement had grown in expanding rings...

The twin disfigurements brought a horrible image to mind... If the tribal scarring is meant to be frightful, it does its job admirably.

His face was likely quite handsome before it was disfigured with the scarring common to his people.

The voice itself is of remarkable timber

What is wrong with these sentences?

I'm only doing this because I can't sleep:

I had thought there to be much work to do on Indian treaties

(style; the sentence is already messy, and "on" is at least less confusing than "with")

Manley is a man of much influence whose name I myself had heard bruited about London whenever the Colonies were mentioned.

(the narrator consistantly chooses "had" over "have" everywhere else in this passage; besides, he's already spent a year in the colonies and met Manley in person)

Deerfield is a bustling little community... The settlement has grown in expanding rings...

(only use "had" if you're sure it's completely stopped growing)

The twin disfigurements bring a horrible image to mind... If the tribal scarring is meant to be frightful, it's doing its job admirably.

(aspect + style; both sentences should be in the same tense, and this option sounds better)

His face must have been quite handsome before it was disfigured with the scarring common to his people.

(style; using "was" to refer to two explicitly contrasted temporal states is pretty weak, especially when a modal construction is readily available)

The voice itself is of remarkable timbre

(duh)

 

[BeholderX]

Overall, even if the text contains some mistakes and typos (after all, it's a forum post, not a published and properly edited novel), I don't think that the initial comment - "somebody without a basic grasp on grammar and a solid command of anspect, tense and mode thinks himself capable of professional writing, but he should stop ASAP before he makes a total fool of himself" - is justified.

I suppose he does have a basic grasp on grammar, strictly speaking. But building up on the basics and getting into qualitative evaluations of grammatic constructions and determining how they best work together is an important aspect of style, and he's failing pretty badly at that.

That also has nothing to do with typos, since it's supposed to be an intuitive process that starts while you're still crafting sencence structures in your head. I suspect that the diary mode made it unusually hard for him to keep his aspects straight, but maybe he shouldn't be writing diary entries then.

 

[Chefe]

You wrote Twilight? I loved that movie.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I was humorously insinuating that the author was just trying to be realistic by having a classically educated Englishman write like a teenager who just scraped through community college. But it's more likely that he was straining so hard to emulate Lovecraft's antiquated style that he forgot about silly things like grammar and AmE/BrE distinction.

Excuse me but what is this? You don't start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction.

(also I've already had "some kind of novel" published, so nyah!)

Now you're throwing a fragmented sentence on the end. That's just bad form.

strictly speaking. But building up

Look, you're at it again!

still crafting sencence structures in your head

Where did you learn English, the International School of Stupid? Learn to spell.

I'm only doing this because I can't sleep:

I had thought there to be much work to do on Indian treaties

(style; the sentence is already messy, and "on" is at least less confusing than "with")

Manley is a man of much influence whose name I myself had heard bruited about London whenever the Colonies were mentioned.

(the narrator consistantly chooses "had" over "have" everywhere else in this passage; besides, he's already spent a year in the colonies and met Manley in person)

Deerfield is a bustling little community... The settlement has grown in expanding rings...

(only use "had" if you're sure it's completely stopped growing)

Why are these all in parentheses? Overuse of parentheses is usually a sign of a badly structured text. You should strongly consider re-structuring your replies in order to avoid this.

First, it's not Vince's game. Second, criticism should be backed up by some arguments, should it not? I must confess that I don't see anything wrong with most of these sentences. They sound properly and authentically archaic to my heathen, "non-native English speaker" ear. I'd say that Scott's writing style is pretty damn close to Lovecraft's, but maybe that's just me.

I think BeholderX does have a point (beyond being an Anal Grammar Nazi) in that some of them do read awkwardly in a few cases. I did find myself once or twice going "eh, what?" and having to re-read a sentence. EG: That "I had thought there to be much work to do on Indian treaties" was one of those moments where the meaning is clear but it read just a tad awkwardly. Unfortunately I haven't had a book published so I didn't find it too bad on the whole.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Hi Chefe.