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I had an English professor once who advised me to write papers discussing a book "as if you were explaining it to a slightly stupider classmate who had also read the work in question." His advice i...
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#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T11:59:55Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1670 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T01:15:00Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1670 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
I had an English professor once who advised me to write papers discussing a book "as if you were explaining it to a slightly stupider classmate who had also read the work in question." His advice is condescendingly worded, but the general theory is sound: take your complex idea and break it down into simpler pieces. Once you have your complex plot carefully constructed in outline form (and you've run it by a few betas to make sure the logic holds), write it out using, well, small words. Imagine that you're trying to present your plot to a bright 10-year-old. You can always go back in a later draft and condense anything you've over-explained, but for your first or second round, keep it plain. In fact, if you have any kind of recording device (video or audio), record yourself explaining your complex plot to a friend, and then use that as a framework for the text. You'll see in the course of explaining it verbally and the subsequent give-and-take what needs to be spelled out and what can be implied.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2011-02-18T13:32:43Z (over 13 years ago)
Original score: 4