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Thursday, July 10, 2014

Delicates


This one was inspired by memories of some of my female relatives on my mother's side. They're all gone now - including my mother - and my uncle Herb, who died a few days ago at age 94, was the last person alive who knew them and their stories. I miss Herb a lot, and I miss those goofy older women who shaped my world view quite a bit.

I've been reading "how to finish your novel" books for a while now. Characterization and dialogue are no problem for me, but my plotting frankly sucks. I'm in the mushy middle portion of my manuscript and am unsure where the story should go. So I've been lapping up books on story arcs, story architecture, and the like.

One I've enjoyed recently is Larry Brooks' book, Story Physics. Lots of valuable content, but the author has one distracting tic that made things a bit weird for me - he pluralizes the word physics.

Here are two examples (from other writers) that feature collective nouns that take a singular verb:

"Genetics is complex, and anyone who tells you different is selling something." - Adam Rutherford at theguardian.com today.

"For the wages of sin is death..." - King James Bible

And now Larry Brooks:

"Physics are everywhere. They influence everything." Story Physics, page 1

"The swing may look the same to the casual observer, but it's not. The physics are different." Story Physics, page 7

"Story physics are true." Story Physics, page 13


Whereas the Encylopaedia Britannica, at britannica.com, says: "Physics is the basic physical science."

That sounds right to me (if redundant), but maybe story physics is? Are? - different. What happened, though, was that I found myself unable to concentrate on the meaning of what the guy was saying after a while. I was all tensed up in anticipation of the next "physics are" taser treatment. Eventually I had to stop reading - and it was a shame, because it's a pretty good book.


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