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If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out, said George Orwell in his rules of good writing. Had he been clairvoyant, he might have been referring to the following sentence.

"For 35 years, Canadian Living has been developing creative meal solutions for Canadian families."

Good on them. If only they would stick to recipes, within which the scope for mangling language is limited.

Of course, this atrocity has most likely been committed by someone outside the Canadian Living organisation. It has almost certainly been committed by someone from the International War on Language Alliance, also known as marketing.

Some people should never be allowed near a keyboard.

For anyone in marketing unsure why I have steam pouring from my ears, I appeal to any atom or two of interest in the integrity of language which remains within your buzz word-addled brain.

I do so by asking what is wrong with the following:

"For 35 years, Canadian Living has been developing creative meals for Canadian families."

Buzz words are instant clichés. They are communication tools for the lazy and the unimaginative. Tell that to your marketing lecturer.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Clichés, Language, Redundancies, Writing

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Remember books?

April 20th 2011 07:54

Bah. And bah again.

Are books dead? No, they are not. But we continue to see a brain-dead segment of society which refuses to recognise their existence.

"What's the name of Frodo's uncle in The Lord of the Rings?" someone asks. "I wouldn't know," comes the reply, "I haven't seen the films.”

Films? Where did the books go? Where did awareness of books go? Before Peter Jackson there was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. He wrote books.

It happened again today, in a news report about efforts to teach computers to feel "regret". The report stated that boffins at Tel Aviv University were instructing computers to do something and then thwarting the process. The point, apparently, is to teach the machine the difference between a desired outcome and reality, this then making the computer less likely to repeat mistakes.

The public relations people who disseminated the story rather predictably got creative and likened the process to teaching computers to feel regret. Emotional machines!

The Tel Aviv engineers, perhaps embarrassed at the literary licence, were quoted as saying that these emotions, naturally, were not quite like those regularly ascribed to computers in science fiction films.

Films? Bah. And bah again. Science fiction writers had invented thinking, feeling machines well before anyone invented the motion picture.

Great ideas, boys and girls, make their way into screenplays through something called books.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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Make it sing 5: Carl Hiaasen creates a character

March 24th 2011 05:44

There are two ways for a novelist to put flesh and substance on a character: the dull way or the creative way.

Let’s take, for example, a character who has entered her advanced years with a rancorously judgmental attitude to life.

She’s bitter and twisted, and the novelist could describe her in those words. That, however, would be a cliché, and attractive to only the most undemanding of readers.

Or the writer could try letting the reader work it out on their own through the story. Some writers will introduce the evidence slowly. Some, like the masterful Carl Hiaasen in his new novel, Nature Girl, will give it to you in a rush of creative brilliance.

Hiaasen introduces a new character at the start of Chapter 7 with the following description: “Disappointment was the fuel that cranked the aging pistons of Della Shreave Renfroe Landry – disappointment in the father who’d cashed out his Shell Oil pension early and invested every dollar in the DeLorean Motor Company; disappointment in the mother who’d refused to hock her heirloom earrings and send Della to a prep school favored by the tall rangy sons of petroleum tycoons; disappointment in the three successive husbands who’d died without leaving Della wealthy and carefree; disappointment in the one daughter who’d run off to follow a rock band called Phish, then married a public defender who was a known Democrat and quite possibly a Jew; disappointment in the other daughter, who’d taken a nursing degree and, instead of bagging the first available neurosurgeon, hook ed up with the World Health Organisation amd moved to Calcutta.”

It’s a joyous romp of a sentence. It’s Carl Hiaasen doing what he does best, satirising America’s social, political and criminal misfits

And showing us what makes good writing.

Remember the words of our two great guides, Mark Twain, who said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug," and The Round Mound of Sound, who said, "Make it sing."

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Clichés, Make it sing, Writing

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And the news about Millennium 4 is ...

January 20th 2011 02:48

Eva Gabrielsson and Stieg Larsson

The world has been holding its breath forever, it seems, waiting to find out if there will a fourth book in the Millennium series.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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A good word about Marina Diamandis

November 10th 2010 03:22

George Orwell’s Third Rule for Effective Writing:

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Language, Poetry, Redundancies, Writing

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The big mouth and small mind of Joe Hildebrand

October 22nd 2010 07:20

Elizabeth Gilbert

Another uninformed, wannabe-clever smartarse has jumped on the Eat Pray Love spleen train, publishing a column at thepunch.com.au last week making the whole Elizabeth Gilbert publishing phenomenon sound like a universal catastrophe.

It's easy for the moderately talented and poorly informed to fall into the tall-poppy syndrome trap. Take any successful writer - one who touches sufficient hearts, minds and imaginations to soar up the book popularity lists - and watch the knives come out

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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Freelance writing for business blogs 3

October 14th 2010 16:02

Blogging is amongst the fastest-growing areas of the interactive digital world, and the business world is embracing this powerful promotional tool quickly. New corporate blogs are appearing every day, and as a result Craig's List and other web hangouts for freelance writers are teeming with opportunities.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Corporate blogs, Freelance writing, Making money by blogging, Writing

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The power of language

September 1st 2010 03:54

Words, like numbers, can be twisted to suit the aims of the user.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Language, Writing

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The inaccurate astrologer

June 23rd 2010 09:46

My astrologer’s advice to me the other day was not to over-complicate things.

My advice to my astrologer is not to over-write things

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Grammar, Redundancies, Writing

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Eat Pray Love: Caroline Overington, you went too far

April 23rd 2010 07:22

Caroline Overington is one of the brighter lights of Australian newspaper journalism. She contributes to radio and television, writes a blog and has published three books, including a novel.

In her column yesterday in The Australian, Overington was witty and compelling with a satirical look at the publishing phenomenon Eat Pray Love, and the book's author, Elizabeth Gilbert

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Books, Writing

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Basic rules for writing a novel: 1

April 11th 2010 00:36

Anyone can write a novel, and many dream of doing so for reasons other than profit and critical acclaim. For many it is like running a marathon — something to be done for the satisfaction; because it is there.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Consistency of style, Language, Writing

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A tip for blogging newcomers

March 20th 2010 06:17

As Orble races toward the 10,000 member blog landmark, we are seeing some interesting new blogs. It's an exciting thing to create a blog, especially if it's your first blog. Your first reader, your first vote, your first comment and your first interaction — it's a brave new world.

There are many tips for new bloggers, and they have been listed and discussed in various posts in this blog among many others. A lot of those tips are common sense: choose a topic and stick to it; write clearly and well; use a spell checker; do some research on key words and search engine visibility etc

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Blogging, Writing

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Twilight's vampires aren't real-life

February 11th 2010 05:39

Stephenie Meyer

Emmet Spain, a 29-year-old Australian who has just successfully negotiated the obstacle course which leads to the publication of a first novel, may have ended, once and for all, the raging debate about the legitimacy of Twilight.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Writing

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Dark corners of the language: clichés

February 1st 2010 05:17

We have in the past advised novice writers against using clichés. There no known excuse to use a cliché, we said. There is no imaginable circumstance in the occupied universe, we advised, that can justify using a cliché.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: A writer's tool kit, Clichés, Language, Writing

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