Tuesday 2 October 2012

It seems a little frustrating

This is in answer to a comment in the last post by mattgusta. It consists mainly of links and rambling, only tangentally about RPG's

"What's your interest in E-Prime?"

Well.. the idea grew in a series of connections.

I found an article on E-Prime via a tumblr called Daily Idioms, Annotated. (Which you should avoid if you fear procrastination.) That linked up with something I read a while ago and blogged about here. (The last half in particular about the lack of use of 'is' in greek drama, and everything from there to 'ceaseless flow'.

I suspect all that stuff hid inside my mind because I have a few half-finished projects scattered around written in iambic pentameter. One a play, the other, a choose-your-own-adventure story for smartphones with each choice a block of verse. Writing those made me obsessed with something, something to do with describing the world as a series of relations between living things always acting on each other, presenting choices as dynamic living options. That vague but powerful feeling leapt into one kind of form when I read Havelocks book on literacy and changed again when I read about E-Prime.

I go on for a loooong time about orality here.

It seemed interesting, that I might learn something from doing it. It might make me focus more on my writing, become more direct, less fuzzy. Sometimes just focusing on a kind of grammatical or rhythmic challenge can change the way you write. Even if the challenge has little importance in itself, it gives the left-brain something to worry about and lets the rest of you loose.

3 comments:

  1. BUT THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE OF THIS POST IS NOT WRITTEN IN E-PRIME!

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    Replies
    1. I HAD A FUCK OF A TIME GETTING THE THING CORRECT AND WROTE THE BODY OF THE POST AS A RESPONSE IN COMMENTS, ONLY LATER WAS I FORCED TO MAKE IT A FULL POST SO THE FIRST SENTENCE FAILS AS E-PRIME. I HOPE THE REST DOES NOT.

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  2. I guess I was unsure about E-Prime because a great deal of the unclear or lackluster writing I encounter doesn't fall short because of "to be", but you've convinced me of its value, at least as an exercise.

    I actually remember that Old Snow post. It's interesting. I hear a lot about setting as a space in which other things happen, but you seem to be saying that the relationship between person and place is an extension of, or a reflection of how people relate with each other. It reminds me of something Zak S. said somewhere (his blog or in Vornheim) that games set in cities aren't really about where the players are geographically, but where they are in terms of consequence (who did they piss off to get where they are? what are those people going to do?) It's like, I don't know, causality vs geography.

    In any case, I saw that you were looking for a d100 table
    on Google+, and I need one for my game, too, so here's what I have so far.

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1klz5kFBlT9N7tGoHsKtAyM2yHaBRaOztydnXKu4-Ug4/edit

    ReplyDelete