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Re: The Art of the Love Letter
by Devin (devin-at-vibechild-dot-com)
on Oct 08, 2005 - 02:18 PM
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http://devin.vibechild.com/
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Nobody talks like that. At least nobody who's not on meth talks like that. Meth is not romantic. Meth is hard to read. Big words don't make you sound more um... good - they make you sound more.... bad. Seriously, it took me about 20 minutes to read this comment. When I look at stuff that's trying to be too flowery, it makes my brain glaze over. I finally got through it and discovered that it means absolutely nothing that could't have been said in real language, and far fewer syllables (and with verbs).
I'm sure you don't believe me. Here is why it's so hard to read. You're yanking the reader from image to image without giving time for them to sink in. You don't let the reader know what they are reading, and you don't provide any verbs. Nothing actually happens. Here are the images:
1) Eyes, blurryness
2) path and gate
3) Instinctive gate maintainence.
4) Words
5) Lips
6) Talking to yourself
7) Pulling things out of your neck
8) The back of your mind
9) Passion
(End of second sentence and nothing's happened yet - we still haven't been informed what this is all about)
10) Talking to yourself again (about what?)
11) Partying
12) wealth
13) noises
14) prettyness
15) oh are we talking about something that means something? What?
(End of third sentence)
16) Simplicity (How'd that get in here?)
17) monosyllabity (this is starting to sound appealing)
18) talking
19) a relaxed pace
20) putting something into a rhythm
21) of light? or of intelligence?
(End of Fourth Sentence - no hints yet that this is a love letter - also no real verbs)
22) Rebelling
23) skilled
24) words
25) Fingers (sign language?)
26) tongue (is it attached?)
27) getting across the meaning
28) space between here and the bottom
29) the content of the message
30) ANGELS FROM HEAVEN, AMEN
31) faces
32) hanging
33) MC Hawking
34) FIRE!
35) your brain.
(The 5th sentence FINALLY gives us our first verb: "fail")
36) confused
37) educating
38) dictionary
39) meager
40) solution
41) has no accent
42) life
43) sterilized
44) supernatural
45) words
46) submissiveness
(The 6th sentence still hasn't told us what we're reading - and again gave us no real verb)
47) walking quickly
48) mouth
49) HELL!
50) 3rd degree burns
51) mythical creatures
52) pulling apart
53) smelly contaminated air
54) more internal organs
55) a girl?
56) moves cloth
57) pain
58) light
59) eyes again
60) smile
61) good memories
The first paragraph finally ends after 61 different images and 3 verbs: Fail, Parts, and Illuminates. We finally get a hint that this is about a girl that was nice to you. We still don't know (except from the title) that this is supposed to be a love letter.
I'll stop here. I think I've made my point. Big words with the verbs removed do not make something poetic or romantic. If you want to make something sound mushy, think of the mushyest things you could say in a room full of people and not be embarrassed. That is as far as you should go in writing. And no matter what you are writing, it's always a good idea to start it off by letting people know what they are reading.
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