I’ve been reading a lot of Yukio Mishima’s fiction lately. In awe of the richness of his vocabulary, I decided to code a little program that analyzes a novel and tells us how diverse the author’s word choices are. Enter Vocabulary Richness Ratio, my newest JavaScript experiment!
a work-in-progress – in other words, take the results with a grain of salt.
I’ve combined my expertise in literature and creative writing together with my interest in coding, and this little program was the result. Again, I must emphasize that it’s only a work-in-progress. It can give you a hint of how rich the vocabulary of your book is, but it’s not exact science.
Vocabulary Richness Ratio is a JavaScript program that finds unique words in a text and, together with other factors, estimates how diverse the book’s vocabulary is(more…)
By “concept”, we usually refer to an abstract theme, topic, or group of ideas. And so, in this context, concept fiction refers to writing that is not plot-based but rather themed-based.
In some way, this might make you think that concept fiction is a matter of genre, but this is not entirely accurate. True, most e.g. crime fiction is plot-based (whereas literary fiction isn’t), but there is an important difference.
Whereas the idea of genre fiction (or of literary fiction) informs the aesthetics and form of the narrative – that is, what it looks like – concept fiction refers to the process itself: how to write the narrative.
Of course, having a different methodology of writing directly affects the outcome – and so, to some extent, the aesthetics. This means that:
although concept fiction is applicable to any genre (or literary fiction, or experimental fiction), it does somewhat blur the established borders between genres and can destabilize its own position in the literary category.
Especially if you’re a genre writer, the first element above might sound like something bad. It isn’t, but it also depends on your priorities. We’ll get back to this later in the post. For now, a simpler way of putting it would be this: “Concept fiction helps your work stand out from the vast crowd of mediocre works”.
Much better, isn’t it?
In this post we’ll take a closer look at all these elements, and see how writing concept fiction can help you produce intelligent narratives that are cohesive, symbolically rich, and intriguingly original.
Concept fiction means to begin with the theme before you begin with the plot and even the characters(more…)
Virtually every man-made thing you see around you right now is likely produced because of capitalism. It’s capitalism that has allowed me to write this post on my Chinese-made mini laptop, and you to read it on your (almost certainly) Chinese-made device. “Awesome!” you might think. “Capitalism is freedom, then! You’re a free writer and I’m a free reader.”
No. Capitalism isn’t freedom.
It feels like that because both you and I happen to be – for the time being – near the fulcrum of the seesaw of economic exchange. And this seesaw isn’t well balanced, either. On the one end sits a hippo (capital), and on the other end half a billion ants (workers) trying to keep the thing from imploding. You and I are somewhere around the fulcrum. And because of that, most of us are stupid enough to think we’re more related to the hippo, rather than the ants.
But that’s the bubble-gum, pink-clad, rough love of capitalism. Like every system of dominance – think religion – it promises you heaven but makes sure to show you hell if you don’t fall in line. “Oh, so you don’t like the way things are, then? Well, why don’t you go and live in [insert sweatshop country]?”
Capitalism is an economic system predicated on injustice and psychological conditioning. We are all accomplices; the system works thanks to us.
How can you be a free writer in such a framework?
Wanna enslave someone? Make them depend on something. Writers are no exception – they will whore themselves for sales, clicks, likes, you name it(more…)
