I think Anatoly’s point is just that this project is will involve an absolutely massive expenditure of time and effort, while being overwhelmingly likely to fail. In general, the combination of these two situations is very good reason not to do something, especially when there’s no clear payoff.
For my part, I also don’t think it’s true that LWers are well equipped to handle this sort of project. LW tends to attract comp-sci, math, physics, bio, engineering type people. It also tends to specifically drive away history, literature, art history, english type people. The reaction to philosophy is mixed at best. If GRE scores represent anything to do with writing ability, this means that LW is a community that generally selects against writing talent. And writing talent is just a minimum condition on writing good literature. It’s not close to sufficient. Almost everyone who spends their entire lives perfecting their writing and trying to write great literature fails completely.
It also tends to specifically drive away history, literature, art history, english type people.
The causes of that, and how to counteract them, would be a topic very much worth investigating. We cannot get by on matter-oriented skills alone.
will involve an absolutely massive expenditure of time and effort
Well, yes. I´m just beginning to set the foundations and attempting to gather interested, like-minded people. The easy part is to look at an old book and go
where is there here room for improvement?
what techniques and methods in this book wouldn’t a modern writer be able to get away with? unless already high-status or explicitly homaging older works?
A typical example would be to switch from an Omniscient Narrator who judges characters for the reader, to a narrator that doesn’t spell things out so much, while also avoiding the alienating extremes of a Cameraman Narrator who only shows the externalities of actions. Third Person POV narration seems to be the modern standard, with character thoughts referenced to obliquely (instead of “‘She´ll kill me!’ she thought”, use “She would kill her!”) so as to get past the subconscious separation between reader and character, and make the story more immersive.
Another would be to take old stories that used to follow Random Event Plots and Nested Stories and shave off anything extraneous to whatever the tale´s “about”. Part One of Don Quixote had lots of little stories and backstories in it that had nothing to do with the plot, the themes, or the message (heck, sometimes they sort of undermined it; a pastoral fantasy in a chivalry lampoon?), and which didn’t even serve the purpose of being allegories or reflections of it, and which might have been better off as separate stuff. Many nineteenth century Doorstoppers were compilations of serialized works where the author was paid by the word, encouraging them to verbosity and filler.
when there’s no clear payoff
There is; fun, and improvement of writing and critical skills, and all the secondary skills that go with that. There is also focus; an interesting, challenging goal, with clearly-set parameters, and with all the usual facilities of fanfiction.
There’s already a bit of a tradition of writing fanfiction of classics (from the Aeneid, to Avellaneda’s Quixote, to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), and there’s a bit of a tradition in the fanfiction community of writing fics that change something about the original that audiences found unsatisfactory, and “Better Than Cannon” is not all that uncommon a praise.
The only thing about this project that is novel and dangerous and exciting is that, instead of starting from works that come under heavy fire for their flows, one starts from works that are so sanctified and canonized as to be nigh-untouchable. Setting out to “improve” them is a twofold task:
Determining what, precisely is great about them, why we would want to keep them around, why they would be worth the effort of reading by new readers.
Getting rid of whatever gets in the way of that greatness, of conveying whatever the work is meant to convey.
This optimization process, and its defiance of blind faith, bias, and halo effects, is gratifying in itself, and very much in the spirit of Less Wrong. Failure, at first, is, of course, inevitable, as part of the process called deliberate practice.
Almost everyone who spends their entire lives perfecting their writing and trying to write great literature fails completely.
Irrelevant; we’re not trying to write new great literature; we’re just updating stuff that’s allegedly (allegedly) great.
LW is a community that generally selects against writing talent.
I think Anatoly’s point is just that this project is will involve an absolutely massive expenditure of time and effort, while being overwhelmingly likely to fail. In general, the combination of these two situations is very good reason not to do something, especially when there’s no clear payoff.
For my part, I also don’t think it’s true that LWers are well equipped to handle this sort of project. LW tends to attract comp-sci, math, physics, bio, engineering type people. It also tends to specifically drive away history, literature, art history, english type people. The reaction to philosophy is mixed at best. If GRE scores represent anything to do with writing ability, this means that LW is a community that generally selects against writing talent. And writing talent is just a minimum condition on writing good literature. It’s not close to sufficient. Almost everyone who spends their entire lives perfecting their writing and trying to write great literature fails completely.
The causes of that, and how to counteract them, would be a topic very much worth investigating. We cannot get by on matter-oriented skills alone.
Well, yes. I´m just beginning to set the foundations and attempting to gather interested, like-minded people. The easy part is to look at an old book and go
where is there here room for improvement?
what techniques and methods in this book wouldn’t a modern writer be able to get away with? unless already high-status or explicitly homaging older works?
A typical example would be to switch from an Omniscient Narrator who judges characters for the reader, to a narrator that doesn’t spell things out so much, while also avoiding the alienating extremes of a Cameraman Narrator who only shows the externalities of actions. Third Person POV narration seems to be the modern standard, with character thoughts referenced to obliquely (instead of “‘She´ll kill me!’ she thought”, use “She would kill her!”) so as to get past the subconscious separation between reader and character, and make the story more immersive.
Another would be to take old stories that used to follow Random Event Plots and Nested Stories and shave off anything extraneous to whatever the tale´s “about”. Part One of Don Quixote had lots of little stories and backstories in it that had nothing to do with the plot, the themes, or the message (heck, sometimes they sort of undermined it; a pastoral fantasy in a chivalry lampoon?), and which didn’t even serve the purpose of being allegories or reflections of it, and which might have been better off as separate stuff. Many nineteenth century Doorstoppers were compilations of serialized works where the author was paid by the word, encouraging them to verbosity and filler.
There is; fun, and improvement of writing and critical skills, and all the secondary skills that go with that. There is also focus; an interesting, challenging goal, with clearly-set parameters, and with all the usual facilities of fanfiction.
There’s already a bit of a tradition of writing fanfiction of classics (from the Aeneid, to Avellaneda’s Quixote, to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), and there’s a bit of a tradition in the fanfiction community of writing fics that change something about the original that audiences found unsatisfactory, and “Better Than Cannon” is not all that uncommon a praise.
The only thing about this project that is novel and dangerous and exciting is that, instead of starting from works that come under heavy fire for their flows, one starts from works that are so sanctified and canonized as to be nigh-untouchable. Setting out to “improve” them is a twofold task:
Determining what, precisely is great about them, why we would want to keep them around, why they would be worth the effort of reading by new readers.
Getting rid of whatever gets in the way of that greatness, of conveying whatever the work is meant to convey.
This optimization process, and its defiance of blind faith, bias, and halo effects, is gratifying in itself, and very much in the spirit of Less Wrong. Failure, at first, is, of course, inevitable, as part of the process called deliberate practice.
Irrelevant; we’re not trying to write new great literature; we’re just updating stuff that’s allegedly (allegedly) great.
Are you conflating academic interest in the history of the arts with proficiency of creative writing skills? More importantly, what is this “talent” you are talking about?