Memos to self

[larryhammer]

• Just because you spent 100 pages searching for a place the plot can go does not mean the reader should too.
  
• When you have a shapeshifter, do not use "shift" to mean "move slightly" -- it's ambiguous.
  
• If your werewolf is part of a pack, it must be as present in the story as his family. A pack is a second family and a were lives in the tension between the two.
  
• If you put a troll in the basement, you need to know what a troll is.
  
• If you write "that's just whack," readers will correct it to "wack." If you write "that's just wack," readers will correct it to "whack." You can't win here.
  
• Realism is no excuse for losing narrative momentum.

[Poll #840222]
---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

My brain would want to read the one as whacked, and the other as wacky.

[janni.livejournal.com]

That's just whack.

Also, punctuation is not speech. Just sayin'. :-)

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

For the sentence you put up, my brain wants it to be "That's just whacked."

With the word whack, my mind comes up with "Guido says we gotta whack the guy."

My ever fertile brain wants to make 'wack' into 'wacko'. "That's just wacko."

My brain obviously doesn't know when to stop. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Ignore my poll answer, as it's apparently spelled w-a-c-k.

For future reference:
http://www.slangcity.com/search.htm

LOL at memo #2.

Some purposefully irritating internet poster is in the basement? ;)

[larryhammer]

Ah -- a reference.

BTW, you can change your vote -- click through to the poll, then Fill Out Poll.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Cool! It's now changed. Slang City was actually suggested as a YA resource at a panel I attended at The Book Fair last year. It's pretty (insert whatever word now means cool) and makes odd song lyrics make more sense.

[ferragus.livejournal.com]

With stillnotbored on this

That's just whacked.

Though I'd usually say, "That makes too much sense"

[borntofr4g.livejournal.com]

Whack!

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

Not a clue.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

"That's just slang that will date very quickly"?

(Yes, I feel like a total meanie now. And I'm even kind of fond of that particular piece of slang.)

[larryhammer]

That's the danger of slang. It's like writing in dialect that way.

---L.

[palomapus.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but all of the folks I know who would have been - let's say original users of this kind of slang way back when it was fresh (not to be confused with tight or off the hook)- it absolutely is "wack" and not the action word "whack" - in this case pronunciation is spelling, as least as far as those I know who are/were original users of this particular word.

As for me personally - I am also pretty sure it is wack, like the astute person above noted - as in short for wacky. Funny what the results when you put the educated writers on task for street slang spoken mostly or at least firstly by those in the process of their education! Now I wonder what all the leet (text message language, I think that is what it is called)spellings are considered correct misspellings of words. 2much!

[larryhammer]

I've been speculating that it's short of wacky. FWIW, I've usually seen it as wack myself.

---L.