Turkey City Lexicon

[swestrup]

The Turkey City Lexicon is a list of writing workshop terms for common features in Science Fiction writing. Many of these are terms for mistakes. Since my novel is SF/Erotica and November is over, I've been looking at things like this list, to assist with the necessary editing. I am distressed to say that my novel is probably guilty of about a dozen of the sins mentioned in the lexicon. Admitedly in two cases, that was the result of a deliberate decision on my part, that I stand by. In the other cases, I can only plead inexperience and writing in a rush. Some of these I already knew about and was already planning to fix. Some I hadn't realized I was doing. After a quick read-through the list it would appear that my novel suffers, to one degree or another, from:

• Brenda Starr dialogue

• Brand Name Fever

• Not Simultaneous

• "Said" Bookism

• Tom Swifty

• Bathos

• Countersinking

• Dischism

• Fuzz

• Show, not Tell

• White Room Syndrome

• Wiring Diagram Fiction

• You Can't Fire Me, I Quit

• The Cozy Catastrophe

• Deus ex Machina or "God in the Box"

• The Grubby Apartment Story

• The Kitchen-Sink Story

• The "Poor Me" Story

• Bogus Alternatives

• Frontloading

• Infodump

Some of these problems will be much harder to fix than others.