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MagicSanta Inner circle Northern Nevada 5841 Posts |
I've been working on a book, the writing not reading, and wondered what people prefered as far as format. It concerns a period of four years and is presently in subject matter form rather than in order of events occuring. What do you folks prefer?
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Michael Baker Eternal Order Near a river in the Midwest 11172 Posts |
Chronology vs. topic? No preference, as long as the read is good, and the ordering seems logical.
~michael baker
The Magic Company |
landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Non-fiction or fiction? Either way, you're telling a story. Start with something that grabs interest and go from there. Especially if fiction, there are no rules. For non-fiction, it's not uncommon to have an opening chapter that gets to the heart of the issue and then the next chapters telling in chronological order how it all came to be.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
balducci Loyal user Canada 227 Posts |
As far as format goes, you can never go wrong with pop-up.
Make America Great Again! - Trump in 2020 ... "We're a capitalistic society. I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out. I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No." - Craig T. Nelson, actor.
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Michael Baker Eternal Order Near a river in the Midwest 11172 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-04-07 12:47, balducci wrote: Awesome!
~michael baker
The Magic Company |
Tom Jorgenson Inner circle LOOSE ANGLES, CALIFORNIA 4451 Posts |
I would prefer subject matter from you. It would allow you more depth and lateral freedom, more freedom to wander. We can put the time line together from that.
We dance an invisible dance to music they cannot hear.
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MagicSanta Inner circle Northern Nevada 5841 Posts |
I agree Tom. In order I think it looses something. This started out as a script I was working on and I decided to write everything up first and the rought turned out to be around 160 pages.
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balducci Loyal user Canada 227 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-04-07 15:28, MagicSanta wrote: "looses"? Be sure to have your manuscript proofread. Anyway, 160 pages is far too many for a pop-up. I guess this is not the children's book you have / had on the go about the lonesome pony or coyote or whatever that was aboot? If you want me to be serious for a moment, be sure to include a subject index at the back of the book. I mean, if it is that sort of book. Any serious book over 100 pages deserves an index.
Make America Great Again! - Trump in 2020 ... "We're a capitalistic society. I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out. I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No." - Craig T. Nelson, actor.
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
On 2011-04-08 01:38, balducci wrote:
Quote:
Any serious book over 100 pages deserves an index. Right. And it also deserves an undergraduate going through it with a highlighter to mark the "important" parts. |
balducci Loyal user Canada 227 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-04-08 02:06, stoneunhinged wrote: Not so sure about the undergraduate and highlighter part. My pet peeve with magic texts (especially the larger ones) is that so few include a subject index. Nearly any book should, so far as I am concerned.
Make America Great Again! - Trump in 2020 ... "We're a capitalistic society. I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out. I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No." - Craig T. Nelson, actor.
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Balducci, I think what I'm teasing you about is your definition of "serious".
A dictionary is a serious book. Should it have an index? Should Shakespeare be indexed? How about novels? Are they serious? Should Santa write a work of fiction, should it be indexed? Or do you only mean non-fiction? Would you like someone to index, say, Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit"? or Kant's "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment"? Are they not serious books? Who would index them? Who would be qualified to do such a thing? I stand by my highlighter comment. (Although I do use a highlighter now and then, just to mark the dirty parts. For research purposes, of course.) |
seadog93 Inner circle 3200 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-04-08 02:13, balducci wrote: Absolutely, a table of contents and a detailed index. For a good enough book though I'll deal without it. I have one book w/o either, which is frustrating, but it so good and worthwhile I've gone through it with mini post-its that label each section. It actually has ended up being more useful than an index, but not every book is worth the effort and I often don't have time to do it often.
"Love is the magician who pulls man out of his own hat" - Ben Hecht
"Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing'. Between the two, my life flows." -Nisargadatta Maharaj Seadog=C-Dawg=C.ou.rtn.ey Kol.b |
balducci Loyal user Canada 227 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-04-08 02:28, stoneunhinged wrote: I think the meaning of your highlighter comment was not clear to me earlier. I see now, I think, you mean that a serious text deserves to have people studying it. Sure, I'm all for that. I thought you meant something more like a serious text deserves to be disrespected by the masses who muck it up with a marker.
Make America Great Again! - Trump in 2020 ... "We're a capitalistic society. I go into business, I don't make it, I go bankrupt. They're not going to bail me out. I've been on welfare and food stamps. Did anyone help me? No." - Craig T. Nelson, actor.
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stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
Nah, my humor is sometimes so obscure that it doesn't even bring a smile, much less a laugh.
Perhaps it only amuses me--and me alone--to watch an undergraduate with a highlighter marking up a copy of "Hamlet". |
landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Seeing notes and highlighting that I did decades ago is always like a bizarre alien encounter. Who was that guy? How was he so smart? How was he so stupid? Not only do I not recognize it as my own, but I don't even recognize it as something I might have written at one time.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
stoneunhinged Inner circle 3067 Posts |
HA!
Believe it or not, sometimes I'll be reading something, having a thought that goes something like, "Now I get it!". Then I notice that I had penciled something in to that effect nearly thirty years ago. I've been "getting it" for thirty years. When am I really, finally and truly, gonna "get it"? Maybe what I really need is an index in the back! |
LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
I kinda like my fiction chronological, and my nonfiction episodic.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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