Grammar and Shipyards

 

Paulo Coelho is notorious amongst Brazilians for screwing up the Portugese language. Screenplays make sense if formatted correctly. Trainspotting and Wuthering Heights, both brilliant novels, include barely-comprehensible speech.

I had tons of other examples while washing dishes, but have forgotten about them upon seeing this annoying little keyboard. My point: why the hell do people so much about grammar and authors writing in script style when the point of reading a story is reading a good story? Granted, we aren't professionally published writers in the physical dimension of this universe; but the internet contains so much unassuming talent that owns all over the good things IRL. Over the past week, I've seen examples underlining the difference between bad grammar and incomprehensible prose. The first is usually caused by people who use ESL; the second, I've seen in some native English speakers who have grown careless with their own language. I ain't giving links because that would be mean.

Ch-yeah, babycakes: them evil pplz who z is prolly ur neighbor. Go weed your own backyards, and give us Asians grammar lessons instead of pointed glares.

Don't get me wrong: I have no stories to be reviewed. I've been looking through advice posts, tutorials and review shops; all I found is a great big cesspool of mean.

I guess so many reviewers seem mean because of the lack of communication skills. I can't link to because my internet is , though. Try looking up sandwich method. It might help.

Oh wait, I'm supposed to be ranting, aren't I? I'm supposed to be typing down some ten reviews, too. But my sense of time is warped, and while evaluative notes I've made remain written, I don't care. I'll be posting at least four of those tomorrow, anyway. Plus that detailed description of how I do reviews. Plus the related sample fic. Plus a few oneshots. Plus these were supposed to have been posted two days ago. Why did I volunteer to do this again? Whatever. The first week of this account has seen more than enough updates. It's high time it slowed down to a moderate pace.

 

Little fangirls who have only been living in this world for about sixteen years, roleplaying for seven, can be intensely high-strung. What screwed up your reading glasses and made you care so much more for structure than plot, eh?

Why in the world would amateur reviewers compare one author's work against more experienced writers? If you were being remotely sensitive and objective, you'd realize that the best comparison against one person would be themselves. Give me crap about how more experienced people are meant to be inspiration if you are one.

Objective? But that's a subjective way of giving crap opinion!

No , Sherlock. Objective on the review, while remaining Author-centric.

A review, though made up of personal output, doesn't have to be all I hate your freaking script styleRandom OTPs because I say so, and other such nonsense written with verbosely impressive flair. Who in hell died and made you dance, Lucifer?

I dislike a whole load of Kpop groups, but I've never made a review based on which characters I liked and who I hated. It's not nice, and it's unprofessional.

And don't make your misunderstanding of scripts affect your review. Go find a proper screenplay and weep to its brilliance. People on AFF don't even write in script style. They mostly write in an illiterate manner. Again, give a grammar lesson. Nicely. Sandwich. Pillow. Similar . I forgot. I don't take down notes in class, weirdass. I hated my first major, but learned a bit.

But we ain't no professionals, says me! But like I says, so many talented people on the internet, writing epics for free, make S.Meyer seem like a rock with feelings written on it with parrot droppings. Most humans with brains make her seem so, anyway.

Whatever. I don't like you, you-know-who.

I made no valid arguments. I at ranting. Sorry to all drama .

 

Comments

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ErisChaotica
#1
Oh, and I actually find it more disappointing to find stories with grammar that you can't really pick at unless you gear into Grammar Nazi mode but pretty much nothing that makes it outstanding than I do a story with some grammar mistakes but a good plot. Having good grammar doesn't guarantee good writing, as evidenced by the millions of native English-speakers who are not in fact churning out works of literary prowess and barely know a thing about their own language beyond what's necessary to get by in life, such as casual conversation.
ErisChaotica
#2
*thought
*format dialogue in prose
ErisChaotica
#3
The AFF script writing thing bugs me because they're not trying to write a screenplay, they simply don't know how to properly format dialogue. Though I guess if you want to play Devil's Advocate, the formatting of the dialogue is just an arbitrary convention that doesn't need to be taken that seriously.
ErisChaotica
#4
Honestly, when it comes to reviews, I pay far more attention to the commentary than the scores. If someone gives a person (any person, not just me) a crap score but doesn't justify it with anything more than "this ," I'm not inclined to take it seriously any more than I am inclined to place my faith in a very high score that lacks concrete substantiation of what exactly is so great about the story and simply gushes "I love it." I think the scores are overemphasized at times. Comparisons among different people are a way of promoting a constructive competitive environment where people strive to write as well as other people around them, but at the same time, like you said, comparisons along the timeline and across the different works of an author's own writing are much more meaningful for an author-centric evaluation. That's part of why I dumped on you four different stories from different genres as well as an older work of mine for comparison (now I feel guilty for being a burden, lol).

You're right about the majority of the review shops and "advice posts." Most of people running them don't really know what they're saying or are simply there to rant about their personal pet peeves instead offering legitimate advice.

While writing bad grammar can be a headache to get through, people also overemphasize its importance compared to the other parts of writing. I saw a review shop that counted grammar as 30 out of the 85 possible points and I literally though 'what the actual ____ is wrong with you.' A misconjugated verb or incorrect tense should not be a reason to completely tear apart or write off an otherwise beautifully plotted story with compelling characters and a meaningful underlying message. I may be a bit of a grammar freak, but even I'm not that huge of a Certified Grammar Nazi _______ to disregard content in favor of pure structure.