Cirsova Summer 2021

A new season brings a new edition of adventure magazine Cirsova, complete with unknown stars, feats of heroism, and quick-paced twists worth of the classic Argosy magazine. Continuing the direction set down by its fifth anniversary, the Summer volume presents a mix of old favorites and new stars, with an eye for longer tales this time. Also, the experiments with illustrations return, with work from Mongoose and Meerkat illustrator Dark Filly and newcomer UsanekoRin gracing the pages. And anchoring the volume is the second issue of the 1980s-era indie comic, Badaxe.

Cirsova’s Summer 2021 volume opens with the second part of Michael Tierney’s The Artomique Paradigm, the latest of his Wild Stars adventures. Wild Stars is a long and vast setting, previously told in comics. And while it takes a while for newcomers to move past the setting shock, this second set of chapters settles into a wild dash across a pirate planet. The locales are ambitious and pulpy, setting a backdrop for a plot that movies at the speed of Max Brand’s historic adventures. An internal logic to the gleefully over-the-top names reveals itself through quick asides between the inevitable setbacks and betrayals. This portion of The Artomique Paradigm ends with a masterful cliffhanger. While we are promised the conclusion in the next volume, that conclusion is still three months away.

Caroline Furlong’s “Lupus One” is a joyous homage to classic 20th-century anime, filled with mecha, monsters, gods, and alternate universes. And it is a pleasure to read something influenced by anime and manga without it becoming a mere Xerox of the original medium. No reluctant and depressed mecha pilots here. “Lupus One” transplants a class primary world fantasy like many of those found in Weird Tales, where the main character stumbles into a lost and almost legendary weirdness, into the futuristic setting of the moon. While “Lupus One” is self-contained and hints at a happy ending, plenty of hooks exist for continuation, which I hope Furlong will explore in the future. And, in a masterful stroke of editing, “Lupus One” also bridges the science fiction settings of the Moon and the Wild Stars to the fantasy worlds in the stories that follow.

Tais Teng’s “His Amber Eyes, His Pointed Smile” is a Central Asian-flavored revenge story, as little Iskander grows up wanting to avenge his mother’s abandonment by his father. Yet the path of revenge is also the path of following in his father’s footsteps. It is an earthy chinoiserie, and almost a warning of how pleasures can corrupt, wrapped up in a fairy-tale.

J. Comer’s “Sky Machine” follows the fate of the healer Sorana and her Roman compatriots as they are captured by a Scandinavian tribe. With certain death awaiting them, the Romans hatch a scheme for escape, one dependent upon the observations of the great “sky machine” of the heavens above them. It’s a more straightforward tale than the previous ones, but executed well, and the slight accent given to familiar names adds a touch of the exotic to the otherwise familiar Roman and Norse setting.

Kat and Mangos return in Jim Breyfogle’s “The King’s Game”. This time, the Mongoose and Meerkat are out seeking information. The best place for that may well be in the Regum Arena, playing an enchanted game similar to chess but only played by the rich and the powerful. Mangos’ sword is on the line, for not only must he play against the assembled worthies, but he must also play against the Meerkat herself. Breyfogle continues to mix exotic locales and unique plots for the Mongoose and Meerkat, forcing his characters to rely on their wits as much and even more so than the flashing of blades. And while Mangos is slowly gaining wisdom to match his formidable sword arm, the mysterious Kat shines again with her schemes.

Paul O’Connor’s Badaxe rounds out the Summer volume with an intervention by and an escape from the dread god Badaxe. Layers of obfuscation slowly peel away, leaving one to wonder how the all-too-female Tanree’s destiny will tie into the prophecy of the boy who will kill Badaxe. New players enter the game, ready for a final confrontation in the next volume. 

Cirsova also offers a preview of Jim Breyfogle's upcoming The Paths of Cormanor, soon to be accepting pre-orders on Kickstarter. As editor P. Alexander says:

Inspired by eastern European and Scandinavian fairytales, The Paths of Cormanor is the story of a beautiful young woman (who can turn into a cormorant), a handsome prince (who’s the seventh son of a seventh son), and more than a handful of dreadful monsters.

All in all, the Summer 2021 edition is a worthy addition to the long-running string of excellence readers have come to expect from Cirsova.

Cirsova Fall 2020 Special

The Cirsova Fall 2020 Special has arrived, just in time for Halloween, with a new bundle of strange yet thrilling adventures, daring suspense, and even a horror story or two. To editor P. Alexander's immense credit, each one of the fifteen tales is worthy of a week's discussion covering both the stylistic and thematic choices. More importantly, and even more to his credit, each tale is worthy of rereading.

Here are but a few of the highlights.

The Fall Special kicks off with "Melkart the Castaway", an adventure from antiquity, when the gods were still yet men. This was an excellent adventure in the vein of Manly Wade Wellman's Kardios. (Reviewed in depth here.)

“The Way He Should Go” tackles fatherhood in the same vein as Lone Wolf and Cub and The Mandalorian, but brings life to the internal struggles of the father and the protector in ways that the more visual media of manga and television cannot. Don't think that it skimps on the intrigue and adventure, though.

"Tilting the Wick" slowly develops the mystery behind a strange monastery hidden off the map in a sword and planet future. Something as simple as repairing a pump sends a traveling engineer and doctor on the path to unraveling the monastery's heresies and chemistries. The setting and story are so pregnant with lore that it would not be a surprise to discover that this is but a chapter of a soon to be released novel.

"Slave or Die" provides a nice change of pace to the previous sword and sorcery and sword and planet tales. A convict laborer must escape a prison planet, where the bright future of Apple and SpaceX designs is bent to a more sinister end: work or die. As he struggles to escape, his captors proceed to nickel and dime him for every expense and luxury possible. Strip away the alien trappings, and this has a haunting "Not Ripped from the Headlines, but Give it a Few Years" feel to it. And more than a little dry humor. Perhaps the next prison will be of bright lights, white plastic, and streamed entertainment...

"An Accumulation of Anguish" is a Halloween monster tale where a trick-or-treater runs into not one, but two real monsters. It's a bit short, almost abrupt, but the twist at the end is worth it.

Not only did I enjoy the stories, I enjoyed how the stories flowed from mythological to sword and sorcery to sword and planet to technological future and then back to not-quite-present day. A nice trick of presentation that serves to set up the appetite for each story. For just as a reader's appetite for a particular type of fantasy is being sated, Cirsova provides something new when it would be most appreciated. Little touches like the organization and the pulpy fonts add to the presentation, especially in paper format.

But, as always, it comes down to the well-chosen stories. And, while Cirsova is a favorite of the Castalia House Blog, the magazine still doesn't get half the recognition it rightfully deserves.

The full list of Cirsova's Fall 2020 special includes:

“Melkart the Castaway” by Mark Mellon

“Its Own Reward” by Rob Francis

“The White Giant's Map” by Richard Rubin

“The Chamber of Worms” by Matthew X. Gomez

“After the House of the Laughing God” by Michael Ray

“The Way He Should Go” by Joshua M. Young

“Tilting the Wick” by J. Comer

“Slave or Die” by Benjamin Cooper

“He Who Rides on the Clouds” by Trevor R. Denning

“To Rest Among the Stars” by Su-Ra-U

“Ecliptical Musings” by Bill Suboski

“Not Any Earthly Shade of Color” by Danny Nicholas

“In the Bowels of the Theatre” by Matt Spencer

“An Accumulation of Anguish” by James Lam

“The Horror of the Hills” by Jude Reid

Wrapping Up the Look at Style

The original purpose of this style series was to weigh in on an off-hand comment elsewhere about using Shakespeare and the King James Bible as a basis for contemporary style. The reasoning behind that comment is that Shakespeare and the King James Bible were the basis of Modern English, so its time to return to the source. My initial objection rested upon the linguistic shift and the subtle differences between Shakespeare's Early Modern English and today's Modern English. (Oh what a difference fifty years makes.) But as I poked into various elements of style, I realized my objection was based on a realization that any discussion of style would only add to the initial selections of Shakespeare and the King James Bible instead of offering alternatives. Fortunately, the investigation proved profitable.

I am in no way suggesting that writers should not read Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Saying that would be attempting to defend the indefensible. Basic cultural literacy demands familiarity with both. And the core claim that Shakespeare and the King James Bible created Modern English is indisputable. My objection rested solely on how the Great Vowel Shift that occurred while Shakespeare was writing tended to obscure the rhyme, meter, and, occasionally, meaning. But I soon learned that rhythm and rhyme were not the only aspects of style.

While exploring rhetorical devices, it soon became clear that Shakespeare and the King James Bible would be excellent sources for learning these advanced grammars. After all, these foundational English works are used time and time again to illustrate specific rhetorical devices. There is more to dynamic language than just cadence, after all.

And if I think that Shakespeare and the King James Bible should be lifelong studies instead of for a season, the distinction is so slight to not merit argument in this matter.

The question now becomes what Modern English works to augment this impressive canon with. Unfortunately, I now have more questions than answers.

I first turned to Poe, as he is the father of contemporary short fiction and an example of the Romanticist roots of pulp. Between Castle of Otranto and Poe's detective fiction, I had been viewing the Romantic period through rose-colored lenses. For while modern mysteries and fantasy originated during this time, so did the simplification of style that led to today's terse, transparent style, sometimes called Hemingway's even as it lacks his longer sentences. B. R. Myers pointed out that the inability to construct the long sentence is one of the leading challenges for today's style-minded writers, unlike in the period between Shakespeare and the Romanticists. Then, the fashion of long, complex sentences nested in series of successive clauses thrived in an era where beauty on the page was unencumbered by the demands of performance and oration. The Romanticists' issue with this style echoed Harrison Ford's complaint about Star Wars' script: "You can type this shit, but you can't say it." Now, thanks to 200+ years of literary fashion, the written word needs to reflect everyday speech. Reconciling the demands of the long sentence with those of the spoken word is now the fundamental challenge of the would-be stylist. And, as the current age continues to be shaped by texting, chat programs, and other social media, to learn complex language, one thing is clear:

You have to go back.

But to where and when?

"A Reader's Manifesto"

In his 2001 "A Reader's Manifesto", B. R. Meyers takes five of his contemporary writers to task over how stylish affectations destroyed clarity of thought. While most of his article consists of pointing out just how the sentence cult had poor sentences in technical detail, several of his general observations merit consideration by any student of style--if not outright warnings of future pitfalls. Below are some of Meyers' observations that resonated with me. The entire article is worth reading.

***

It has become fashionable, especially among female novelists, to exploit the license of poetry while claiming exemption from poetry's rigorous standards of precision and polish.

***

The decline of American prose since the 1950s is nowhere more apparent than in the decline of the long sentence. Today anything longer than two or three lines is likely to be a simple list of attributes or images.

***

I doubt that any reviewer in our more literate past would have expected people to have favorite sentences from a work of prose fiction. A favorite character or scene, sure; a favorite line of dialogue, maybe; but not a favorite sentence. We have to read a great book more than once to realize how consistently good the prose is, because the first time around, and often even the second, we're too involved in the story to notice.

***

Anyone who doubts the declining literacy of book reviewers need only consider how the gabbiest of all prose styles is invariably praised as "lean," "spare," even "minimalist."

***

At the 1999 National Book Awards ceremony Oprah Winfrey told of calling Toni Morrison to say that she had had to puzzle over many of the latter's sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was "That, my dear, is called reading." Sorry, my dear Toni, but it's actually called bad writing.

***

Clumsy writing begets clumsy thought, which begets even clumsier writing. The only way out is to look back to a time when authors had more to say than "I'm a Writer!"; when the novel wasn't just a 300-page caption for the photograph on the inside jacket. A reorientation toward tradition would benefit writers no less than readers. In the early twentieth century it was fashionable in Britain to claim that only a completely new style of writing could address a world undergoing an unprecedented transformation—just as the critic Sven Birkerts claimed in a recent Atlantic Unbound that only the new "aesthetic of exploratory excess" can address a world undergoing ... well, you know. For all that Georgian talk of modernity, it was T. S. Eliot, a man fascinated by the "presence" of the past, who wrote the most-innovative poetry of his time.

***

The emphasis in the last is mine. Not only does Meyer reinforce canon, he offers hope for the various SFF reformers looking back to the past of Piper, Campbell, and the pulps. To go forward, look back.

It Ain't Necessarily So...

In response to yesterday's post, The Frisky Pagan takes the received wisdom on Hemingway out to the woodshed:

Now, I don’t think this is the style of today’s popular literature. If anything, Fitzgerald is closer to what is now popular (because it’s more natural) than Hemingway. There’s really nothing natural or short about Hemingway. Oh, sure, he did write some (very famous) short sentences, and you can’t write a whole book only with half-page sentences anyway, and he did play with sequences of short sentences, then followed by unholy, 200-word abominations, but he did NOT write in journalese or like a “telegraph.” It’s true, however, that he had a DIRECT style (and a phobia of commas, I guess,) with little to no abstraction, emotions, or introspective digressions. Perhaps from there his fame of writing concise, direct literature comes from, but you certainly can’t jump from there to “he wrote short, simple, clear sentences, like today’s bestsellers.“

He provides a few examples from Hemingway's writing that do torpedo the claims made yesterday. Or at least show that some strange telephone game happened between what Hemingway's actual technique and what everyone thought he was doing. It isn't the first, and as the Frisky Pagan brings up, it isn't the last:

It’s also clear that writers like those (and there are many) are constricted, terrified of something, so afraid of breaking some unnamed writing law that they mutilate their texts and don’t allow them any freedom. And it gets even worse when action scenes kick in since some fool once said that short sentences enhance the immediacy and strength of action, and now everybody writes stuttering, two or three-word action-scene sentences.

(That fool might be Mary Robinette Kowal.)

The focus on such things is First and Second Things all over again, with good writing using technique, so the use of technique means that this should be good writing. But, when second things get placed first, you don't get first or second things, which explains why, in an age where technique is bandied about online so readily, there's precious little good writing. Here at my blog included.

Anyway, thanks to the Frisky Pagan for setting the record straight in an article well worth reading.

How Did We Get Here?

This long series on style was kicked off by the growing discontentment within some parts of the PulpRev over the current style of invisible prose currently used. So, before I start defending the indefensible this week, let's take a look at how English fiction prose got to its current state. And, like most of the social upheavals of the past century, this change has its roots in the 1920s. Tom Simon explains:

In fact, the most successful experimental writer of the 1920s and thereabouts is not even recognized as experimental anymore, because his experiments succeeded too well. That was Ernest Hemingway. The essence of his genius was to apply ‘telegraphese’, the compressed and allusive language of the transatlantic cable reporters, to the short story and the novel. Look at any of Hemingway’s novels side by side with his contemporaries, such as Fitzgerald, Woolf, or Joyce himself, and then with a randomly chosen bestseller from any later period up to the 1980s or thereabouts. You will probably find that Hemingway’s language is much more like the latter-day bestseller than any of his contemporaries. They were still writing the self-consciously ‘bookish’ language of the Victorian novel, allowing of course for the changes of dialect over time. Hemingway wrote a compact and elliptical language that showed more than it told, and hinted at more than it showed, and derived its patterns of grammar and diction from spoken rather than written English. Few later authors could equal the pith and force of Hemingway’s style, but they imitated it as well as they could, until it became the default ‘transparent’ style for even garden-variety commercial fiction. Heinlein’s enormous reputation as a science fiction writer rests partly on his being the first writer to successfully apply the Hemingway technique to SF.

In short, it's Hemingway's world, we all write in it. But the trend towards "patterns of grammar and diction from spoken rather than written English" did not start with Hemingway. Like all American fiction, it finds its roots in the Romantic age's return to nature. Prior to them, written English was dominated by the fashion of layers and layers of clauses--hypotaxis. Unfortunately, the trend towards spoken English in prose has been accompanied by the drive towards realism in fiction and the subsequent decay of rhetorical devices in prose. Somehow, reflecting what people actually say turned into reflecting what the People say, even though no version of the People actually resembled the man on the street.

Curiously enough, Hemingway's style is an outgrowth of poetry: From reading Rudyard Kipling Hemingway absorbed the practice of shortening prose as much as it could take.  It mixes "'declarative sentences and direct representations of the visible world' with simple and plain language." But what is unsaid matters, too:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
—Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon

One could easily say that the prevalent style is a mimicry of Hemingway's simple and plain language divorced from Hemingway's discipline. For while there is an app to teach the mechanics of Hemingway's style, his iceberg theory of composition is usually honored in the breach.

Telegraphic Description

And, of course, no digression into matters of style is complete without some negative examples:

The Planetary Defense Commander describes a common affliction in science fiction:

Anyway, what I really can’t deal with in this book is a writing style that:

1. Treats the reader like he/she has brain damage.
2. Breaks the flow of the story.

I’ve been seeing this style from a lot of indie authors lately, but this is the first traditionally-published novel that I remember seeing it in.  I’ve mentioned it before in my review of a novel by Evan Currie, and I think it may have been present in the two books I DNFed before this one. 

I listened to the novel while driving, so I don’t have quotes, but here’s my impression of the writing style, during a scene where a character is fleeing armed hijackers in a spaceship’s engine room: 

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a toolbox.  The toolbox would probably have tools inside it.  The crew would need tools to maintain the ship’s engines.  Without engine maintenance, the engines might stop running, and then the ship wouldn’t be able to reach its destination. 

Meanwhile, I’m driving, yelling at my car’s speakers, “STFU!  Toolbox!  All you had to say was toolbox!  I know what a #%*(# toolbox is for!  Wasn’t someone chasing you with a gun?  STFU!”

To which the comments expand further:

I sometimes call it telegraphic description, which I guess is similar to blow-by-blow descriptions, and it’s pretty common in starting or amateur writers: if some character opens a door, this kind of writer will tell you that he placed the hand on the knob, clutched it, and then turned it. 

By the way, you are cursed now, you have noticed it and now you will see it everywhere. 

Conversations on Style

I'm not the only one talking about style these days in our little corner of the pulp world. Style is a hot-button conversation right now. Much as with Appendix N, the conversation is less which style is correct, but that something is missing in the current fashions of the day. 

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The Frisky Pagan weighs in on the right proper use of profanity--and the abuse of it in science fiction:

A few hours ago, in a sudden masochistic impulse, I went to the website of the science fiction & fantasy magazine Uncanny and clicked on their latest story. I read a few sentences and, as expected, recoiled in horror. But something else happened: I became painfully aware of something that, although I had noticed before, I had never managed to hold onto as a concrete thought: these fucking fuckers swear too fucking much. 

I can already hear the usual howling: “Why are you curtailing our style! That’s how people talk!” First of all, you have no style, which is why all your stories are the same and you have to pad them out with fucks, references to Trump, and silly nonsense.

I can't help but be reminded of Orson Scott Card's observation on the juvenile nature of shock.

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Misha Burnett continues his series on poetry for the prose writer with a discussion of meter:

English, as I said in my last article, is a stressed language. Syllables in english words are either stressed or unstressed, and when you string a bunch of English words together to make a sentence you can plot the rhythm of the sentence by marking the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. 

This is called meter, and poetry geeks divide meter into metrical feet of two syllables and give each type a name. Two unstressed syllables is a dibrach, an unstressed followed by a stressed is called an iamb, a stressed followed by an unstressed is called a trochee, and two stressed syllables is called a spondee.

To put that into context, let’s turn to Shakespeare, from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy: 

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry

 ***

Over at Cultural Rumbles, there is a list of books that may help unlock poetry from an exercise in doggerel into proper appreciation. 

And JimFear has asked for suggestions of poems that may help a non-poetry fan develop his prose and appreciation.

Misha Burnett: Poetry for Writers: What Not to Read

As the ongoing conversation on prose style develops, many writers have been turning to the old advice of reading poetry. However, poetry has a diminishing part of the English language for years now, leaving a daunting task for those looking for an introduction to the art form. Where to begin?

Misha Burnett offers some advice to help narrow down that task;

This series of articles will be focusing on poetry strictly as an aid for developing a fiction author’s feel for composition and rhythm with an eye for producing more readable prose. Consequently, I will be discussing different forms on the basis of how they suit that end, and leaving aside the weightier issue of what is good poetry or (horrors!) What Is Poetry? 

With that in mind, I advise avoiding the following not because they are bad (I’ll be adding some of my favorites to the codex expurgatorius) but because they are not helpful. 

First, don’t read Blank Verse. 

I’ll be honest, if I were suddenly granted Godlike powers I would prevent any poet from writing Blank Verse until she or he could prove mastery of at least three different strict forms.  When Modernist masters (people like cummings, Eliot, and Pound) wrote Blank Verse they wrote in a way that concealed the deep structure (what Baudelaire called “the secret architecture”) of the poem. The rhythm of the language overwhelms the layout on the page. 

Modern poets, for the most part, write Blank Verse to avoid the bother of having any structure whatsoever, deep or shallow. They write Blank Verse not because it is an advanced way of using the language but because rhyme and scansion are hard work. 

Sadly, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between verse which is beyond formal structure and verse that is beneath it until you have a solid grasp of poetic structure. So I advise authors who are trying to learn how to use the structure of language in prose to avoid Blank Verse altogether. 

Second, don’t read Non-English Poetry. 

Unless, of course, you plan on writing prose in other languages. 

Check out the rest of Misha's article.

Parataxis and Hypotaxis

Style, again. This time, rhetorical devices, including Hemingway's simple style:

Parataxis is the natural way of speaking English. It’s the way English wants to be spoken. English is a basically uninflected language. Everything depends on the word order. It’s all subject verb object. The man kicked the dog. The cat sat on the mat. The angels have the phone box. In Latin and German it’s different. Words can be moved around, but you still understand the sentence because of the endings. “Nauta amat puellam” and “Puellam nauta amat” both mean “The sailor loves the girl.” English isn’t like that. It’s paratactic. It’s linear. It’s one sentence. Then it’s another. 

The alternative, should you, or any writer of English, choose to employ it (and who is to stop you?) is, by use of subordinate clause upon subordinate clause, which itself may be subordinated to those clauses that have gone before or after, to construct a sentence of such labyrinthine grammatical complexity that, like Theseus before you when he searched the dark Minoan mazes for that monstrous monster, half bull and half man, or rather half woman for it had been conceived from, or in, Pasiphae, herself within a Daedalian contraption of perverted intention, you must unravel a ball of grammatical yarn lest you wander forever, amazed in the maze, searching through dark eternity for a full stop. 

That’s hypotaxis, and it used to be everywhere. 

Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase (pp. 60-62). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Forsyth blames the Romantics for turning away from hypotaxis, with their search for all things natural in speech.

Hypotaxis is unnatural in English; nobody would ever say a sentence like the one above. You have to think calmly for a long time to come up with a good hypotactic sentence, and so a good hypotactic sentence tells the reader that you have been thinking calmly for long time. 

Forsyth, Mark. The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase (p. 64). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Those looking for an alternative to Hemingway's style might consider the layers of subordinate clauses found in hypotaxis. But beware, it will be a hard sell for such writing to pass the ear test.

UPDATE: Out on social media, Neal gives a useful application of how to use both parataxis and hypotaxis:

Formula for a great speech to an audience of all educational levels. Parataxis with Anglo-Saxon (PAS) words. Restatement and addition of new information in hypotactic structure with introduction of latinate words. Restatement of new information in PAS. Iterate, finishing in parataxis.

Also, parataxis and hypotaxis are not rhetorical devices, such as, say anaphora, aposiopesis, chiasmus, or homeoteleuton are. The are syntactical forms, the use of which (along with assorted devices) can be used to characterize a style.

I believe the shorthand way of referring to ensembles of rhetorical style, back when people had more classical educations, where Ciceronian (hypotactic) and Senecan (paratactic).

 Note how he connects English's dual vocabulary to rhetorical effects--and famous public speakers.

The Double Vocabulary of English

Style, again.

As mentioned earlier, English has parallel vocabularies, based on the origin of the root words, such as the Germanic "drink" and the "Norman beverage".  In gross terms, the Germanic version is more forceful and everyday, the French more sophisticated, and the Latin and Greek more scholarly. (There are exceptions. This is English we're talking about. There's always an exception.)

Here's a video explaining more about these parallel tracks.

Anglish

Yep, back to style.

Little things make a mighty stir in little towns, which is why that Kingsford folk talked all that spring and summer about the three unacknowworth bodies, frightful cut as with many seaswords, and frightful twisted as by the tread off many ruthloose bootheels, which the tide washed in. And some folk even spoke off things paltry as the forsaken roadwain found in Ship Road, or true unmennish screams, most likely off a lost wight or northfaring bird, heard in the night by wakeful burgars. But off this idle town gossip the Fearful Old Man took no heed at all. He was by lund withdrawn, and when one is old and weak, one’s withholding is twice as strong. Beside, so eldern a seaheadman must have witted scores off things much more stirring in the faroff days off his unbethought youth.

--H. P Lovecraft, "The Fearful Old Man" 

Meet Anglish, the deliberate pruning from English of all those pesky loan words our magpie language has hoarded away over the centuries. Like the competing trend among grammarians to force Latin grammar on a Germanic language, Anglish is an attempt to shift English into an aesthetically "purer" form, conveniently ignoring the language as it is spoken.

But, for the writer, it provides an interesting exercise in style and word choice. English might be Germanic in origin, but it is also a blend of French, Latin, and Greek, owing to a mix of English peasants, Norman French nobles, and Latin-speaking clergy. This has built up parallel vocabularies, based on the origin of the root words, such as the Germanic "drink" and the "Norman beverage".  In gross terms, the Germanic version is more forceful and everyday, the French more sophisticated, and the Latin and Greek more scholarly. (There are exceptions. This is English we're talking about. There's always an exception.)

Anglish allows a writer to better understand connotation and the interplay of how language of origin affects word choice. In most cases, this is a mere writing exercise, but attempts are underway to convert such works as Shakespeare's plays, Lovecraft's Mythos, and famous orations into this more Germanic form.

Perhaps the prized example of Anglish comes from science fiction. Appendix N alumnus Poul Anderson explained atomic theory in his "Uncleftish Beholding" in one of the occasional thought exercises that sneak into science fiction. Here's how an Anglish speaker might explain the ways of worldken:

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life. 

 The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.

That said, Anglish has survived as a concept for over 300 years, but has never truly caught on beyond scholarly and writing exercises.

The Clave: A Contrast

Fourth in a series on style:

As mentioned earlier, language has an effect on music and thus poetry. In the previous post, we listened to the shuffle, the expression of syncopation in English popularized by Afro-American musicians.

Below is a video on the clave, the Afro-Cuban expression of syncopation in Spanish. It is a five-beat rhythm that does not match the two-syllable heartbeat of the English iamb. Instead, the pattern lends itself to the more lyrical Romance languages. This disparity between an odd-numbered rhythm and English's even-numbered heartbeat also explains why English language haiku is lacking when it attempts to follow the 5-7-5 syllable pattern of the Japanese form.

The lesson here for the stylist is to match the rhythm to the native pulse of the language.

The Shuffle

More groundwork for the musicality of style.

It comes as no surprise that the language that built its lyrical poetry on the da dum heartbeat rhythm of the iamb would popularize the same rhythm in the swings and shuffles of blues and jazz.

Listen to the bass in the video below for the same heartbeat rhythm in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

It takes a little work, but you can sing the sonnet at tempo to the accompaniment of Freddie King and have it retain the life of spoken language without sounding like a robot--or an elementary school language arts teacher. The challenge is to keep the recitation from sounding rote.

Missing Letters: Thorn

Here is a second video laying groundwork for a discussion of style.

Another example of stylistic shift over time affecting pronunciation and thus meter.

Of particular interest here, is the letter "thorn", a strange letter that looks like a lowercase "b" mashed with a "P" (check the video for an example). This letter did not survive the onset of printing, as, much as English printers tended to replace German umlauts with uncontracted vowels "ae", "oe", and "ue", Continental printers replaced the thorn with y. So "thee" and "thou" turned into "ye" and "you" on the page, obscuring the last remnants of the informal "you" grammar inherited from Anglo-Saxon. (It wouldn't surprise me to learn that it sped up the elimination of the informal tense as thee and thou became ye and you, and eventually just you.)

Shakespeare: Original Pronunciation

Rather than get swept up in the recent personality clashes in the PulpRev, I'd rather focus on an idea somewhat tangential to that discussion: how to learn style, or what to do when Hemingway's prose just doesn't carry the rhetorical weight needed in a passage.

But before I can get to those thoughts (And because I haven't mastered how to get multiple videoes on Blogger), I am going to lay a little groundwork prior.

In English, Shakespeare towers above all, in lyrical meter, rhetorical grammar, and characterization. But 400 years of linguistic shift obscures some of the puns and the meters used in his poetry. Thus many scholars have attempted to discover the original pronunciation of the plays from period sources.

Original pronunciation (OP) changes the meter of Shakespeare--or rather restores it from years of pronunciation drift. Any attempt to study Shakespeare for style needs to consider this, as to best understand drama and poetry is to hear it performed instead of reading it on the page.

For instance, the vowel shift on the word sleep, from sla-ep with an unstressed long A to slEEP with an accented long E, affects the stress on the word and the rhythm of the sentence.

For more on OP, including snippets of performances, check out the video below.

Swords of Saint Valentine

Saint Valentinus of Terni was a priest, a healer, and a hieromartyr. As a priest, Saint Valentine offered aid and succor to Christians in a time when persecution of Christians was a long-standing policy of the Roman Empire. As a healer, he restored vision to the blind daughter of Judge Asterius, who had held him under house arrest. When taken before the Prefect of Rome and Emperor Claudius II, he refused to recant his faith. He was tortured, beaten with clubs, and on 14 February 269, executed by decapitation. That day became the Feast of Saint Valentine.

Today, we call it Valentine’s Day.

In honour of Saint Valentine, the SteemPulp community cordially invites all readers to attend their first event: SWORDS OF SAINT VALENTINE. From 14 February to the 28th, SteemPulp writers will serialize pulp-influenced tales of science fiction and fantasy centered around the themes of love and chivalry. Fun, action-packed stories that place entertaining the reader first.

Looking for tales of love or chivalry, preferably love and chivalry? Romantic love and chivalric romance? Gallant knights and fair princesses, fantastic magic and strange technologies, gentle healers and steadfast clerics, cruel emperors and fearsome beasts, unwavering faith and unbreakable honour? Search the tag Swordsofsaintvalentine on Steemit (or follow the link) for the cutting edge of serialized short fiction blending classic values with classic action.

Swords of Saint Valentine will feature stories by  @everhart, @noughtshayde, @t2tang, @jimfear138, @notjohndaker and @jd-alden. Benjamin Cheah, author of Invincible and Hammer of the Witches, will also contribute “Realm of Beasts”, a tale of fearless warriors wielding sword and gun, rampaging man-eating beasts, superpowered cultivators, and martial valour.

Geek Gab: the Steemit Revolution

This past weekend, the Geek Gab podcast hosted Benjamin Cheah to talk about the short fiction revolution heating up on Steemit, a new blogging platform that offers considerable advantages to writers. In this podcast and in his thoughts afterward, Cheah describes these advantages:

Steemit offers three main advantages. First, with the content committed to a decentralised blockchain instead of a centralised server, a Steemit blog is inherently resistant to external attacks and disasters. Second, no external party can alter the blockchain after commits are made, allowing users to bypass censorship laws and agencies. Lastly, Steemit helps users monetise content that they would otherwise post on social media for free.

The incentives built into the Steemit platform incentivises everyone to write more, upvote more, comment more and keep improving their writing standard. It's a virtuous cycle that rewards those who invest time and energy into mastering the craft and understanding the system.

For readers, Steemit provides another venue for your favorite writers, allowing them to earn money for their hard work without hiding it behind a paywall. Which means there's more fiction readily available for you to read. Maybe your favorite writer is serializing a new story there right now. And there are a host of new writers testing the waters as well. Plus, on 14 February, Benjamin Cheah and the SteemPulp writers will unleash their first coordinated fiction campaign: SWORDS OF SAINT VALENTINE.

Saint Valentinus of Terni was a priest, a healer, and a hieromartyr. As a priest, Saint Valentine offered aid and succor to Christians in a time when persecution of Christians was a long-standing policy of the Roman Empire. As a healer, he restored vision to the blind daughter of Judge Asterius, who had held him under house arrest. When taken before the Prefect of Rome and Emperor Claudius II, he refused to recant his faith. He was tortured, beaten with clubs, and on 14 February 269, executed by decapitation. That day became the Feast of Saint Valentine. 

Today, we call it Valentine's Day. 

In honour of Saint Valentine, the SteemPulp community cordially invites all Steemit fiction writers to participate in our first open call: SWORDS OF SAINT VALENTINE.

Give us pulpy tales of love or chivalry. Preferably love and chivalry. Give us romantic love and chivalric romance. Gallant knights and fair princesses, fantastic magic and strange technologies, gentle healers and steadfast clerics, cruel emperors and fearsome beasts, unwavering faith and unbreakable honour. No genre restrictions but one: the story must fit the pulp aesthetic.

If such tales of adventure and romance appeal to you, make sure to visit Steemit on Valentine's Day. Meanwhile, to learn more about Steemit fiction and SteemPulp, check out the Geek Gab podcast below:

Invincible, by Kit Sun Cheah

In an Empire beset by internal rebellion and ferocious yaomo, the elite Shenwujun stand ready to defend human civilization. Among the Shenwujun there is none finer than Ensign Zhang Tianyou, who earned the nickname Zhang the Invincible. During a mission to quash a nascent rebellion, a Shenwujun detachment discovers evidence that the Grand Union is supporting the rebels. Zhang is tasked to investigate and destroy this new threat.

But will Zhang the Invincible meet his match at the hands of the rebel called Han the Demon Sword?

With this summary, Kit Sun Cheah (an alias of Castalia House author Kai Wai Cheah) introduced Invincible, his serialized novella that won an Honorable Mention at the Q1 2017 Writers of the Future contest. Through its seven chapters, he brings the fantasy genre of xianxia to English-speaking audiences, mixing generous portions of pulp action and military fantasy into the Chinese setting.

Most xianxia fantasies feature magicians who cultivate their internal energy to perform a dazzling array of magical and martial feats as they ascend a near infinite ladder of power levels, most far beyond the reaches of mere mortal cultivators. The primary drive for these characters is to gain more power, through such means as making contracts with magical beings, raiding treasure houses, or clashing with bandits and rivals. This leads to proud and selfish protagonists taking what they want because no one can stop them. Invincible's Zhang uses some of the same techniques, as he draws on the purifying methods of cultivation to remove fatigue, enjoys the blessings of his contract with the celestial phoenix Hong Er, and has earned his reputation as a skilled magical warrior on the battlefield. But Cheah upends the usual wish-fulfillment fantasies of xianxia by placing Zhang under military discipline. Duty, not power, becomes the driving force for Zhang, who must fulfill the duties to his country, his regiment, and his celestial partner as he pursues monsters and men who might as well be monsters. For each duty may grant privileges, but also demand obligations in turn. And, as Zhang finds out, sometimes these obligations conflict with each other.

Wave Those Tags, by Lester Dent

(This article was first published in 1940's Writer's Yearbook.)

Wave Those Tags

by Lester Dent

This, again, is my personal opinion...

Here is my formula for creating characters to put in fiction yarns.

Now...before launching out on this character blueprint, it might be a good idea to borrow some sale-psychology and build up the thing a little. To show, in other words, that it'll work--that it is being used successfully.

Though there seems to be some wariness about admitting it, most writers apparently work to formula to a great extent. Most pulp writers have devised a sure-fire master plot, and have been writing and selling the same yarn over and over for years. A surprising number of the slick authors seem to do the same thing. And there appears to be an inclination among editors to have their own idea of a formula for a yarn, and not buy anything that doesn't fit. They call this their groove, or the slant.

So probably the first thing to do is to try to show that stuff written to formula will sell.

In order to write a story, it seems best to start with a plot and characters. Yarns can be written without either one, but may be a little difficult to make a living selling them.

Whether the plot comes first, or the characters, seems to be a subject for argument. One method is to build the character, then dope out a plot in which they strut their stuff in their respective manners. The other system is to construct the plot, then manufacture characters to fit it. Possibly and argument can be avoided by saying: start out the way that seems most convenient. Professional writers make both systems work. Most apparently mix the two systems.

Possibly the initial step in creating a character should be:

FIND A NAME

It is very doubtful if the name is the most important step in creating a character--but it does seem to be the natural first thing to do.

Names are convenient as handles. But it helps if the characterizing doesn't stop with merely finding a name. One of the loudest squawks from editors is that so many characters are just names being dragged through yarns.

Making the name of the character different from that of any other actor in the story is usually a good idea. Should there be Morgans, Mermans, and Murtons in the yarn, somebody may be inclined to become confused.

It may also be nice to have the name sort of express the nature of the character--convey some suggestion as to his manner, appearance, nationality, occupation, or something. This gag appears to be quite widely used.

Examples: Dashell Hammett used a detective character named Spade, a hard digging instrument quite in keeping with the name. Another writer of whodunits, Rex Stout, makes use of predatory animal as a name source--Nero Wolfe and Tecumseh Fox being two instances. A further analytical dissection of these last two names might lead to surmise that, in the case of Nero Wolfe, the name Nero was used because it conveys the idea of a guy is inclined to fiddle while Rome burns, which the fiction character at times apparently, although never actually, does. The name Nero might also have certain inherent leonine qualities.

The Tecumseh Fox name might be analyzed as implying a man who was as sturdy and inscrutable as the old Indian chief, externally, while actually being as sly as a fox. Erle Stanley Gardner had had great success with a character named Perry Mason, although here an analysis might approach conjecture. A mason is a builder, and the word parry means to fend off; which is the way the character works--fending off numerous enemies while building his cases. (Expert Mind Reading, Park Central Hotel. One Flight Up. Ask for Lester. Advt.)

If heroes have manly names, it might help.

Taking a thesaurus and looking up words with strong, manly meanings, then improvising upon them, is a trick worth trying.

In the pulps, this approach to name-making often is obvious. Pulp hacks are guilty of characters with such names as Click Rush and Mace and Lash.

Names of flowers and pretty things are frequently used for the beautiful young heroine in the yarn. The thesaurus could be consulted for these, too.

A reliable old gag for getting names of foreign characters is to open an atlas, look at the map of his native country, and pick out a town, river, mountain or anything that has the flavor, and use that.

Villains may be made to sound like rascals by using harsh, unpleasant names. Example: Didn't Hammett use a villain named Gutman?

A good hissy, snaky sounding name has helped to make a villain.

Telephone books can be a source of names, or of confusion.

The gag of using expressive names, while a much-used one, might possibly be overdone. The comic strips make use of it to an extreme degree, but editors of fiction magazine may prefer it tamed down a little, made more subtle.

Now...here is the next move in creating a character:

FIND AN EXTERNAL TAG

This is probably the most important step.

"Tag" seems to be the term generally used. It means that the character is next equipped with something that the reader can readily recognize each time the actor appears on scene.

A simple example of an external tag, for purposes of illustration, might be the one-legged old rascal in Treasure Island. The wooden leg is the thing that is remembered, hence it can be considered the tag.

External tags are peculiarities of appearance, manner, voice, clothing, hobby, etc. Incidentally, it might be wise to neglect wooden legs, because editors have a horror of cripples in yarns. This taboo against cripples is worth remembering, because it seems to be iron-clad.

Tagging is reliable stuff, apparently, judging by how much it is used in fiction, plays, radio, movies, books. The motion pictures usually apply a very obvious form of external tag to one or more characters. A supporting player in a film who goes around trying to do something--work a magic trick (aw, come on; pick a card) for instance--throughout the picture is an example of such a tag.

If the character is a minor one in the story, it seems possible to hang on a very obvious, even numerous tag.

If the character is in the lead--be careful.

Don't make the tag too goofy, although the manner handling may have a great deal to do with whether the tag makes the character seem silly or not. But make it intriguing enough to be what it is supposed to be--a label.

As a further example of varyingly bizarre tags which are made credible, it might be convenient to return to Rex Stout and his Nero Wolf character. The character is a tremendously fat man--which is a not-so-zany tag. But Wolfe also raises orchids, and will not be disturbed by absolutely anything when tending them. He drink prodigious amounts of beer, which must be exactly right as to temperature. He has a ridiculous horror of any moving vehicles. He is a nut on food...which, incidentally, is not the full list of tags pasted on this character, but the job is done entertainingly. The moment Wolfe comes onto a scene, one of the tags is waved like a flag, so that there is no doubt who has appeared.

The last statement is the idea.

Wave the tag. It is supposed to be an unmistakable label by which the reader can recognize the character instantly.

Frederick Nebel, in a series of good pulp yarns he once did for Black Mask, used a minor character, a cop, who ambled through the yarns devoting his time to snitching things to eat, and it was entertaining. After stepping into the slick magazines--which he did so quite successfully--Nebel refined the tagging devices somewhat. For example, in a recent short, he used a grandmother who devoted herself assiduously to eavesdropping, the eavesdropping being an obvious character tag.

If this tag can be used in the plot of the yarn, so much the better. The best yarns are those in which there is no dead wood, so if the tag pasted on a character should happen to be the fact that he is an amateur camera fan, it might help a great deal id the fact can be made use of in the yarn--possibly the knowledge of photographic chemistry enable him to recognize a poisonous chemical which has been used for the murder method, and thus thwart the villain.

In Doc Savage Magazine, a pulp, this external tagging has been utilized freely. One of the characters is always dressed in the height of sartorial perfection, the fancy clothes being his tag.. Another character has one of his tags following around after him; it's a pet pig. A third uses words of the most ungodly length, jawbreakers nobody can understand, at the slightest excuse. And Doc himself has been labelled freely with typical hero tags--great size, bronzed skin, compelling flake-gold eyes, quiet manner, amazing strength, fabulous knowledge of various subjects.

The variety of available tags seems to be legion. One of the characters can hate something intensely and spend his spare time grumbling about it. Or he may have a pet peeve on at another character in the story and start a squabble at every slight opportunity.

Now...how to dig up these external tags? This is more difficult than finding a name. Unfortunately, there is no thesaurus of character tags. Some professional writers, in order to simplify the problem, assemble tags as they come across them and file them away on indexed cards. Biographies of famous persons can be used as source material for character tags. Research yields dividends.

Perhaps there is no better way of solving the problem except to sit in front of the typewriter and write down different possibilities until one happens along and clicks.

It may prove wise to give some thought to the character tag before deciding definitely to use it...That is, can it be used conveniently in the story? It's embarrassing to think up a swell, intriguing tag, then to find out that the thing will not fit in at all with the plot or the action of the story.

Acquiring the habit of looking for character labels when reading published yarns may be a help. The name writers, the ones who appear issue after issue in the pulps and the slicks, appear to be the ones who use the most character tags. Why, then, shouldn't you?

Often more than one tag is hung on a character. There seems to be no rule against it.

But for simplicity of handling, it might prove more feasible to devise one main tag, and wave that one like a flag whenever the character moves on the scene. Then the other tags can be subordinated, to be brought out later and used whenever convenient.

In summary: The tag is simply something that identifies the character throughout the story. If, for instance, it should be decided to give Clancy, the cop, some foot trouble for his tag, it might start out by having him getting a new pair of shoes near the opening of the yarn, a special pair of shoes which he knows will relieve his feet. On Clancy's next appearance, he has the shoes on, and they're wonderful. Next appearance, the shoes aren't wonderful, and they hurt like hell. Then he takes them off. Finally he winds up carrying them. And possibly in the climax he uses one of them to bean the villain. God knows how many times that one has been used, with slight variations.

Now the next step in making a character:

FIND THE RAISON D'ETRE

This seems to be a tougher one. But it's still important.

The something inside the character isn't solid and readily grasped, as are the external tags. Abstract is probably the word to use. So an attempt to explain what goes inside may do one of three things--fail to explain anything, ball it all up, or sound asinine.

Another approach to the problem can be made by going back and thinking about the character starting at birth and following right through, so as to get the feeling of knowing just how the character happened to be a certain kind of person.

In the pulps, seems this doesn't have to be very subtle. The hero's sister is killed by crooks, and so he turns detective and is ever after the implacable enemy of crooks. Slight variation of this old one are run ragged in the pulps, and in a slightly refined state, again run ragged in the slicks.

The whole idea is to dope out some reason for the character carrying the external tag or tags which had been previously devised. In the pulps, the reason can be simple: Clancy, the cop, has walked a beat so long he's got flat feet, and therefore foot trouble--and because he's walked the beat so long, he has a consuming ambition to get in the detective bureau and show up these young school-trained cops who lack the Clancy experience. This ambition is what drives Clancy to do the things he does in the yarn. Now and then somebody even dresses this one up and sells it to the slicks.

What is inside the character, his raison d'etre, seems to be highly vital. It should tie in with the motivation of the story, help furnish the reasons for things happening.

The higher the quality of the story, the more important what is inside the character, that is, what motivated him.

And the last step:

MAKE USE OF CHARACTERIZATION TRICKS IN WRITING THE STORY

Wave the tags.

It helps to introduce the hero very early--in the first paragraph, usually--and have him strut his stuff, because first impressions are the strongest. This is just about the No. 1 writing rule in the pulps.

A hero may be built up by having the other characters refer to him in terms of admiration or awe. The pitfall here seems to be that the references can be made over-dramatic to the extent that the device may strike somebody as obvious and silly. Villains may be built as villains in the same fashion, by having other characters mention their dastardly nature, their previous evil deeds.

Have the hero behave like a hero when faced by trouble. Hero should stay human, though. He can get as scared as the next guy, but his courage will carry him through.

Minor characters can also be built by having the other actors refer to them, either to their external tag, or to the kind of stuff inside them.

Often quite a build-up can be given a character before he or she even makes a personal appearance in the story. This device is difficult to employ successfully in shorts, but it is often used in longer pieces.

It is easy to overlook the simplest must of all, that of having the actors keep in character. The hero can hardly go around kicking dogs and making nasty cracks to people weaker than himself. If he makes a nasty remark to a weak and helpless person, he's a cad as far as the reader is concerned. If he stands up to the big, mean boss and makes nasty cracks, that is different.

And it goes without saying that the villain should conduct himself in a thoroughly villainous fashion. There are black villains and half-likable villains. The black villains never do or say anything pleasant. The half-likable cads may be pretty good guys, but just weak. The slicks seem to prefer this type of villain, but the pulps want 'em black.

It does not seem to be a good idea to have the villain become too melodramatic in his villainy. If his badness can be spread out, if he can be kept consistently bad, the same effect many be achieved without the chance of somebody bursting out laughing.

There are many tricks for getting character effects, but probably the best way of securing them is to wade through published material, purloin what seems good, and adapt the idea a little.

Always remembering: WAVE THAT TAG.