swestrup: (Default)
swestrup ([personal profile] swestrup) wrote2006-12-02 05:15 pm

Turkey City Lexicon

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.

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