Writing styles
Posted on | September 12, 2007 | 77 Comments
This being completely ill thing has at least, between bouts of cold sweats and warm sweats, allowed me time to read some books.
I got stuck right into The Road by Cormac McCarthy even though I was hallucinating at times. Honestly, I thought an object on a shelf in the bedroom was a giant arse. Don’t ask me. I haven’t got a clue. He’s got an interesting writing style though. He doesn’t use any punctuation to highlight his dialogue. No quotation marks, no inverted commas, no those two little things you use at the start and the end to highlight the bits where people are speaking.
It got me to thinking. Having a style like that makes your work instantly recognisable so I have decided to go back through my book to make it more distinctive. Instead of quotation marks I’m going to use an ampersand at the start and a tilda at the end.
When people are just thinking and not speaking it’ll be that really long vertical line at the beginning and two colons at the end.
It will revolutionise the world of punctuation which, let’s be honest, could do with a bit of a shake up. As Truman Capote said:
&I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon~
Quite so.
Similar posts
Comments
77 Responses to “Writing styles”
Leave a Reply
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:12 am
Boring!!! What’s happening to you twenty? You must be still hallucinating… You poor fucker.
Call the doctor and get him to sedate you!
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:18 am
Harshman: why boring? because he didn’t use swear words every sentence that ended with a period?
I think it’s quite interesting.
Twenty, if you really want to make your mark in the literature world, maybe you should consider a change of style the whole nine yards. Add to the punctuation revolution your very own spelling revolution as well as de-capitalization of the capitals where they’d normally be.
Although there is a chance you could be completely dismissed as a total lunatic but hey the line between sanity and pure genious is too fine not to cross at times.
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:22 am
FLID
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:23 am
Oh and the Amazon / book link isnae workin.
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:30 am
I am going one step further regarding styles.
I have decided to convey my autobiography through the medium of modern dance and liberal use of balloon puppetry
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:30 am
Invent a new language and stop being such a lazy cunt.
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:32 am
&-:?!:-~
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:34 am
What about No Country for Old Men? (trailer looks awesome, book had an odd ending)
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:48 am
WOW! Twenty Major managed to shite on about his book again! Which is usually followed by about 30 ring suckers saying.
“oh twenty please can I buy your book and suck your nob,”
FUCK OFF YOU CUNT!
This blog should be called Twenty Major-Still Smoking in Dublin Book Shops ….where by the way you can purchase my new fantastic book for €9.95!!!
If you do a book signing I am going with no money and half a dozen eggs!
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:50 am
That’s fine. I’ll be there with a blunderbuss.
Eggs v blunderbuss. I wonder who’d come out on top there.
September 12th, 2007 @ 10:58 am
Oh and the Amazon / book link isnae workin.
Yeah, weird. Oh well.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:00 am
I will, they are Ostrich eggs and I have a giant catapult.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:02 am
By the time you get loaded up I’ll have blunderbussed your face off.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:05 am
Just dont go down the Irvine Welsh route, Twenty. I near went cross-eyed tryin to read in dialect.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:06 am
Nah, none of that.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:15 am
I told you before Twenty, HowardSternitis. Fo’ real.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:26 am
i see the wednesday whingers are here before me so twenty go one step further and omit capital letters too good on yer boyo
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:33 am
writing left to right is so #~passe?}
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:49 am
G.G Allin is a gay homosexual who is gay.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:50 am
Not using quotation marks in a book isn’t particularly original. Flann O’Brien didn’t use them when he wrote At Swim-Two-Birds nearly seventy years ago, and I think James Joyce was prone to leaving them out of some of his books too.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:54 am
I read a book recently and it was written in the style for children. It was very good and a nice happy ending although for a while the tension was high. Maybe you could have a look at the style of writing . The book was called Dick and Jane go to Fly a Kite.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:57 am
“writing left to right is so #~passe?}”
Yes well the arabs could have tolf you that, although reading right to left is not as easy as one might imagine. Front cover is on the wrong side.
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:58 am
Twenty … have you every tried smoking a pipe .. my faather used suck on one and he did a rake of tinkin like
he became a fierce man for the pipe after that but shur wasnt it a strange invention none the less
Oh yeah … my pint for this post .. why not create a FAQ and have the boyohs here post what they want to know about you and the old dog like … right im off to water my bicycle
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
^don’t know if it will work twenty.%
~Better concentrate on that arse a little longer~
Hmmm, probably didn’t give enough weight to that last tilde.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
“Eats, Shoots and Leaves” about the misuse of punctuation, became a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. The book’s declaration for a “Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” is considered a rallying call for punctuation “sticklers” of the world. http://www.lynnetruss.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=8
Twenty, proper punctuation is important. Like some many other things in life it’s becoming a little redundant.
People can always analyse style, you might have to just get over that.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
What’s The Road like though? Heard it is utterly miserable and depressing? Sounds like every other feckin book I’ve read this year. Everyman, On Chesil Beach, life is futile bastards… they make me drink.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
It is a bit bleak, ELCC, but very good.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:32 pm
Hey Gaye, cool name… lol!
In reply; your comment “Harshman: why boring? because he didn’t use swear words every sentence that ended with a period? I think it’s quite interesting.” bored me even further.
No, it’s not the swearing that usually makes this blog reallty funny; there’s usually a bit more to it than that. Like taking the piss out of someone who is clearly as dull and psychophantic for you for example you ringpiece cleaner. As twenty is clearly under the weather and not on form today I’ll step in and call you a cunt instead…
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:34 pm
Sounds like my sex life.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:44 pm
Harshman, harsh but fair…
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:46 pm
I suppose being rude to people behind the safety of a monitor is the current IN… Then again, fair enough.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Jaysus — what is it with the Irish mentality of hating to see others succeed?
GG – shut the feck up and stop being a miserable bastard. Obviously The Blog’s topics are going to be related to whatever is going on in the Blogger’s life otherwise it is just bloody fiction innit? Yes it is. So shut up and stop being a jealous git just because you’re not writing a book.
Yes. Punctuation is a bitch.
September 12th, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
G.G Alinn was born with no nipples so his mother sewed two buttons to his chest.
He was known as button chest throughout his schooling.
September 12th, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
Johnny 5 – Tell me this, what does it taste like? Twentys’ hairy ring that is.
You know nothing of G.G Allin
September 12th, 2007 @ 2:02 pm
It tastes like shite you stupid fucking button chested cunt.
September 12th, 2007 @ 2:08 pm
It would be far cleverer to offer a solution to the built in punctuation of wordpress so that Twenty can fuck about with experimental puctuation on the blog comments. As to comment about Irvine Welsh, it was not purely dialect, but reflected the use of lowland “Scots”…sorry £$%Scots&*( a language in it’s own right.
September 12th, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
Well at least we know who wears the pants. Does he give you a reach around or is he a selfish cunt?
September 12th, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
How the fuck could he give me a reach around if I’m licking his arsehole?
You’re not the brightest of sparks are you?
September 12th, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
Game, set and match, Johnny5.
September 12th, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
Also, seen as we’re on the topic of punctuation, “twentys’” does not make any sense at all.
September 12th, 2007 @ 3:26 pm
New balls please.
September 12th, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
You are either scared shitless that the content is not good enough to hold its own fort that you are resorting to such…”the book was o.k but the punctuation was really cool. You should check it out!….Oh know don’t buy it you can borrow mine”. You should change your name to ten. Maybe i’m wrong and a good puntuation “revolution” is needed! Besos!
September 12th, 2007 @ 4:22 pm
youcouldalwayswritewithoutanypunctuationspacesoranythingelseandwiththesameamountoflettersoneachpagesoconspiracybuffscanfindhiddenmeaningsbyreadingacrossdownordiagonally
September 12th, 2007 @ 4:34 pm
fucklestopped.
johnny5 was right.
September 12th, 2007 @ 4:40 pm
Fucking spelling revolooshon might be more appropriate!!!
September 12th, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
“Game, set and match, Johnny5.” Ha Ha.
I am stupid, fair enough but you lick ring. I don’t know the preferences of homo’s, you do, congrats!
September 12th, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Ooooh, a lot of ill tempered comments today. I’m keeping out it. Actually I’m off to ScaryDuck’s place to read about pooing…
September 12th, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
47 comments about writing styles?
Damn, I need to find another internet pub. This one’s gone balmy.
September 12th, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
Why not omit words altogether and use punctuation marks with spaces in between allowing people to use their imagination as to what the story is.
September 12th, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
Now that’s a top idea.
September 12th, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
A ‘Tilda’? I had to look it up (being of the old school), you mean a ’tilde’?
September 12th, 2007 @ 7:04 pm
Yes, it’s a feminine tilda…erm…
September 12th, 2007 @ 7:16 pm
Why not omit words altogether and use punctuation marks with spaces in between allowing people to use their imagination as to what the story is.
didn’t Frank Zappa release an album like that ?
Twenty – will the book be available as Gaeilge ?
September 12th, 2007 @ 7:18 pm
Er, no.
September 12th, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Shame on you sir – mind you, I think it’s outrageous that cigarette manufacturers do not have labels as Gaeilge on their packets. Health warnings would be so much mre effective to boot! Or maybe not.
September 12th, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Ah… Waltzing ’tilda…
September 12th, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
“Damn, I need to find another internet pub. This one’s gone balmy.”
….ask them to put the air conditioning on
September 13th, 2007 @ 12:09 am
[i]“I am stupid, fair enough but you lick ring. I don’t know the preferences of homo’s, you do, congrats”[/i]
Homos, not homo’s.
We’ll get there in the end.
September 13th, 2007 @ 5:36 am
Having read this blog for a long time without actually making a comment i for some reason feel compelled to make a comment, i agree with GG Allin, twenty, love ur blog, but its quite clear u have been told buy ur publishers to plug that book of urs, every nook and cranny of ur blog contains a reference to it. you have complete fags like johnny 5 sucking ur cock constantly which personally i wud hate. LITERAL cock suckers (johnnie 5) sorry for the grammer mistakes, not u fag.
September 13th, 2007 @ 8:49 am
“You know nothing of G.G Allin” says, um, GG Allin
G.G Allin was a fat talentless gobshite “scum rock” singer in the 80s-early 90s, notorious for hurling his faeces from the stage like I once saw an uran-utang in Dublin zoo do. His “songs” never lived up to the promise of their titles (eg “Watch Me Kill The Boston Girl”, “Suck My Ass, It Smells”).
After kidnapping and torturing some naive groupie à la Rick James, he went down in ’89 for sexual battery or aggravated sexual assault or somesuch not-quite-rape-but-as-near-as-makes-no-difference charge.
After he got out of chokey he died of a boring smack overdose despite having once publically sworn that he would one day commit suicide onstage and take as many of his audience with him as he could.
He had a microscopically small penis (that no one was spared from the sight of), was borderline obese, pig-ugly and covered in self-inflicted scars, burns and dodgy prison tatts that an infant baboon on skunk could have done better.
In death as in life, he has an army of sad, self-loathing and deluded acolytes some of whom are even compelled to take his name to piss around on internet forums with.
And that really is all you need to know.
September 13th, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
“Having read this blog for a long time without actually making a comment i for some reason feel compelled to make a comment, i agree with GG Allin, twenty, love ur blog, but its quite clear u have been told buy ur publishers to plug that book of urs, every nook and cranny of ur blog contains a reference to it. you have complete fags like johnny 5 sucking ur cock constantly which personally i wud hate. LITERAL cock suckers (johnnie 5) sorry for the grammer mistakes, not u fag.
”
Well that’s told me anyway.
Man writes book.
Man advertises book.
Shock. Horror.
The more alarming thing here is that fact that people who use the words ‘wud’ ‘ur’ and ‘u’ when typing with a full keyboard are still allowed to use the internet.
Blow Job, Twenty?
September 13th, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
You know I’ll just keep coming back for more, J5.
September 13th, 2007 @ 12:17 pm
They always do, Twenty, they always do.
September 13th, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
Cunty McFuck, good synopsis.
J5, Do I have any spelling mistakes in this sentence.. YOU ARE A FUCKING CUNT!
September 13th, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
J5, Do I have any spelling mistakes in this sentence.. YOU ARE A FUCKING CUNT!
Not so much spelling but there’s a capital letter in ‘Do’ that should be lowercase, no question mark at the end of the sentence and instead you have two full stops.
Also, calling Johnny5 a fucking cunt is like calling Bryan McFadden a fat, useless gimp whose only right move was to divorce that shrieking whale-creature he married.
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
That’s not very nice, Twenty. I’m not going to suck your cock anymore for that.
:(
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
All I meant was that you are a fucking cunt. I didn’t mean to compare you to McFadden in any way.
Please suck my cock again.
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
No. It tastes like shite anyway.
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
That’s only because it spends so much time in your rectal passage and you, let’s face it, haven’t irrigated in many a long year.
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:53 pm
OK Twenty, your right I will suck you again. How many copies of your book would you like me to buy again?
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
Just the 200.
September 13th, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
Make it 400, just to be safe. Can I suck your dick in lieu of P & P?
September 13th, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
It would be mean of me to say no.
So, no.
September 13th, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
Well you can stick your poxy book up your fat hole then, with bells on.
September 13th, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
Mmmmm, anal paper cuts.
September 13th, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
Well i’m glad its all out in the open that you two are indeed penis sniffers. Can you correct me with any grammer mistakes J5, my english is gradually improving with your help, thanks you cocksucker.
September 13th, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
whose only right move was to divorce that shrieking whale-creature he married.
You disappoint me Twenty – Kerry is a dear sweet girl with the voice of an angel!