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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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October 15, 2004

AND INTRODUCING OUR GUEST BLOGGERS

We are delighted to be able to offer you up a roster of first-class guest bloggers who will probably improve this place beyond measure in our absence. Please take a moment to welcome them in, and don't be shy - they all love comments are looking to spark some dialogue.

OCTOBER 18-21: Jim Ruland is a creative copywriter at an L.A ad agency just down the street from TEV HQ. He is a veteran of the Navy, a football fan, a punk rock enthusiast, and the host of Vermin on the Mount: an irreverent reading series in the heart of Chinatown.

OCTOBER 25-28: Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a 2003 finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV Books), which didn't win any awards and was called "smarmy" by Publishers Weekly, but which is currently being developed into a movie that will never be made, and an award-winning weekly columnist for the Las Vegas Mercury. In addition, Tod's short fiction has been published in dozens of magazines and journals and has twice received Special Mention for the Pushcart Prize. Tod Goldberg teaches creative writing for the Writers' Program at UCLA Extension and resides in La Quinta, CA with his wife Wendy.

And taking over on the two Fridays, we've invited a special guest novelist:

OCTOBER 22 & 29: M. Allen Cunningham is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow, set in a coal town in 19th-century northern California, has just arrived in bookstores and is the #1 Booksense Pick for October. It's also the first novel published by Unbridled Books, a brand new press headed by the creators of MacMurray & Beck and BlueHen.

We'll be back to lower the standards again on November 1. With perhaps the odd photo post from Paris along the way.

Posted by TEV at 12:15 AM |

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Tracked on October 19, 2004 at 12:59 AM

Comments

Thanks for not bailing completely on us TEV.

Have not had the pleasure of reading any Ruland yet, but look forward to it.

Having read some of Tod's ss and columns online, I look forward to next week as well.

As for M. Allen, that is one helluva book - really just fantastic - so the next couple of Fridays should be exciting as well.

And of course, looking forward to the first of November!

Enjoy,

Posted by: Dan Wickett | October 15, 2004 at 12:23 AM

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