The Elegant Variation: "A BRILLIANT, HEARTFELT, DEEPLY MOVING WEBSITE"

TEV DEFINED

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."

April 11, 2005

"A BRILLIANT, HEARTFELT, DEEPLY MOVING WEBSITE"

So, Mitch Cullin, author of A Slight Trick of the Mind, has given us our first blurb for our novel in progress:

"Mark Sarvas has written an insightful, passionate, yet rational book that stays with the reader long after the last page has been turned."
- Mitch Cullin

Now, before accusations of logrolling and backscratching fill the blogosphere, we should probably point out that the very same blurb (along with a number of others) is also yours for the taking ...

Posted by TEV at 08:49 AM | Permalink

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Comments

I read and enjoyed 'THE KNOWN WORLD'; discussing the book locally led to a question as to whether or not it was accurate when stating that Valdosta (georgia) was actually already a settled town in that time period. Clarification would be appreciated.

Posted by: Dr. P. Edwards-Conrad | August 12, 2006 at 12:37 PM

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April 11, 2005