The Love of Gwendolyn Dahl

compilation volume by Jonnie Comet

from the ongoing series A Tale Of Two Paradises

media release by Richard Christopher, for Surf City Source
for general distribution
March 2016

Edmund Burke has it that a certain sublimity exists even in frightening circumstances. In fiction, this can account for the macabre fascination readers have with the most lurid particulars, no matter how immoral it may seem to face and to appreciate them. As a part of the ongoing Two Paradises fantasy series, the short stories contained within Jonnie Comet’s The Hope of Gwendolyn Dahl (Surf City Source Media Group) amply fulfil Burke’s definition of the sublime. Ostensibly a romance, Hope does not quail from lush sensuality nor blunt, unflattering detail. This open-eyed appeal to both the frank and the fanciful is vital to the series’ charm and literary merit.

The Hope of Gwendolyn Dahl opens with the episode ‘Serendipity’, relating two young people’s long, meandering trek over the picturesque interior of tropical Eden Island. Cast off by her abusive brothers, Gwendolyn encounters Jonathan, who gallantly escorts her towards safety, comfort and, ultimately, romance. Over the course of the afternoon and evening the two, in spite of being too far apart in age and having revealed some startling personal secrets, forge an attachment that will conduct them through their shared and individual destinies.

If too young to be a conventional romantic heroine, Gwendolyn is clever and cautious whilst lacking nothing of what makes her authentic as a precocious pubescent girl. She speaks in a stilted style (using few contractions), an affectation from her affinity for Romantic literature but not uncommon in the exotic but formal British Paradise Islands. An accomplished gymnast and ballerina, she is as courageous facing emotional trials as she is facing physical ones. Long belittled by her family, she suffers from an inferiority complex, heightened by her youth and pixyish proportions, till Jonathan, in ‘Creamsicle’, assures her, ‘No mind and spirit like yours could ever be termed “little”.’

Jonathan, son of the territorial earl and heir to a fortune, revels in the role of protector and provider, even whilst succumbing to Gwendolyn’s misplaced, put-on promiscuity. In ‘Day On The Strand’ he introduces her to some of his own acquaintance, impressing her with his eagerness to acknowledge a girlfriend so much younger. Recognised by her father in ‘Sunday Dinner’, Jonathan insists on downplaying his own status in order to be taken only as a respectable young man with a sincere interest in a charming young lady. In private he is as captivated by her heart and mind as she is with his, each of them excited and relieved to discover the embodiment of long-held romantic ideals. But, owing to family commitments, Jonathan will not commit too much too soon, forcing the crisis at the end of ‘Caesura’... and necessitating the next instalment.

Like much of this author’s work, Hope wades deeply into the risqué. The foreword attempts to prepare the reader for the standards of this incarnation of Paradise, a fantastic world strikingly liberal in its freedoms for teenagers. Brief attire, alcohol consumption, and early, casual sexual involvement are all commonplace here. Hope centres round the thematic concept of the prodigal maiden, one that has appeared in other Comet works. The premise of a young girl too soon facing mature situations provides a heroine who is vulnerable, here emotionally, and plenty of opportunities for suspense and worry for her sake.

Gwendolyn, to her credit, is a born warrior, determining that ‘rising to the challenge of being the regular girlfriend of Lord Jonathan of Paradise was no more difficult than mastering a two-and-a-half back salto off the uneven bars.’ She constitutes the best of what heroines should be, astute, eager and unafraid, even in facing the myriad of challenges that accompany falling in love.


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Individual episodes from The Hope of Gwendolyn Dahl are available in Kindle- e-text editions.  The compilation volume, containing six of them plus various addenda by the author and editor, is due out in paperback during March 2016.

More about the Gwendolyn Dahl story arc can be found here (contains spoilers).

On Biblicalism, school of literary criticism

A preliminary overview

Jonnie Comet
26 October 2015


Biblicalism is the school of criticism devoted to the study of a work of literature as viewed through its deliberate or incidental relationship to a monotheistic belief system.

The criticism neither advocates nor condemns any particular religion or denomination but seeks to explicate a given literary work from a Bible-based perspective, evaluating examples, both explicit and implied, within the work and drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of the author’s presentation of Biblical themes through the work.

Many public-school and university instructors in literature neglect to consider such a viewpoint even though its relevance-- indeed, often, its primacy-- to the work is obvious. A prime example may be the novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, herself the daughter of an Anglican priest. The novel is, by design and in effect, a parable about the power of conscious, Christian virtue in overcoming temptation and in redeeming others. All of Jane’s decisions throughout the book are grounded in her own native faith; the reasons for her sufferings are grounded in the failure of others to observe such precepts as each of them have been taught by his or her own faith-- thus, she can be seen as a Christian martyr. The first-person narrator consistently uses Biblical references both to illustrate and to defend the principal concepts.

It can be contended that, neglecting an examination of conspicuous and vital Biblical principles, especially by instructors unprepared intellectually, prejudiced philosophically, or restricted by a comprehensive school’s repressive, secular agenda, no comprehension of the work as a whole can be fully realised. Further, Biblicalism is an appropriate alternative approach in the study of ostensibly secular works such as those of romanticism, naturalism, postmodernism and the gothic, especially as a means to uncover counter-concepts typically left unexplored in most literature courses as taught at comprehensive secondary schools and at state universities.

Examples

Good examples of English-language literature to which the criticism may be applied include:

• Agnes Grey (Anne Brontë)
• Pamela; or: Virtue Rewarded (Samuel Richardson)
• Pamela; or; Virtue Reclaimed (Jonnie Comet)
• Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)
• Oroonoko; or The Royal Slave (Aphra Behn)
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
• Maggie; Girl of the Streets (Stephen Crane)
• ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ (Edgar Allan Poe)
• The Italian (Anne Radcliffe)
• Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (JK Rowling)
• The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (CS Lewis)
• The Lord of The Ring, series (JRR Tolkien)

For further reading, see

The Absolutist, online here

* * *

from Yahoo! Answers:

Books for teenagers are not works of art, they are products designed for a market. Discuss-?

It's all sexy vampires or glamorising suicide/death or spies (genre fiction, generally) to appeal to the stereotypical teenage brain and one series is much like another, all to get $$, movies etc.

.




Hazel:
 

Just because they are successful in the market, does not mean they were designed for it. It also does not mean the author only had money on their mind when they wrote it.

I'm sure some of them perhaps saw an opportunity, knew what the market needed (or what would sell), and wrote a book based on the success rate of others.

This however does not lessen the challenge that is writing a book. Regardless what an author decides to write about, it's not easy. It still takes time and determination with the knowledge that there could be no payout in the end anyways. Writing is art, regardless of the topic and whether or not certain individuals appreciate it.

Furthermore, this occurrence in which you see a huge fluctuation of similar novels being published around the same time after successful sales in that genre, are not limited to teen fiction. 

.

 
Jonnie Comet:

I'm going to agree with and disagree with Hazel's response. Just because they are successful in the market doesn't mean they were NOT designed for it. There's not much difference between a book being successful as literature and one being successful in the market. Personally I prefer the former; but maybe that's why I'm broke.

The philosophical definition of 'art' contains two major elements:

1. All art must be deliberate. It is done on purpose. Accidents are not art. Works of nature are not art. Art is what Man creates; Nature is what God creates. This is the classical Renaissance definition and, to those who are intellectually mature, this still stands up.

2. All art must make a statement. This is its purpose. It doesn't matter what the statement is, so long as it attempts to make a point about something-- really, anything. This is included in the twofold purpose of all literature and art-- 'to delight and instruct', or 'to educate and entertain'. As entertaining as all art is, it is merely a pretty picture or a chanted mantra without a purpose. Mere aesthetics is not art.

Now look at the teens' and children's books. Does the vampire story entertain you? Was it written deliberately (as opposed to by accident)? Does it have a message, attempting to make a point about something? No matter how banal, no matter if you disagree with it, no matter if you can't stand its style, genre, author's haircut or anything else, if it fulfils these basic criteria it is, essentially art. Taste isn't the issue-- purpose is.

Don't cloud the issue by contending it's designed to make money. There are many ways to make money. Making pipes makes money. Paving roads makes money. Reporting news makes money. None of these are art unless they fit the above definition. Literature that makes money is still literature. Maybe it's just distasteful literature.

(NO; journalism in its strictest, properest essence is only facts reporting. It is NOT 'art' per se.)

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from Yahoo! Answers:

What type of female characters aren't there enough of?

-- e.g., personality and appearance wise and what they can do. Are action-type female characters rare? What are cliches that need to be avoided? What would be a refreshing character?

Jonnie Comet:

In my opinion (as a novelist) I don't see enough of what I call the 'triple threat'. In fact I raised my daughters to be triple threats, and both truly are.

The triple threat has three distinct attributes: beauty, brains and virtue. The fascinating sociological context of this is that about 90% of men, whilst attracted to the triple threat, can't handle more than two of those attributes. Beautiful and virtuous, but stupid? --good. Virtuous and intelligent, but ugly? --they expect that. Beautiful and intelligent, but an utter trollop? --they'll take that (actually prefer it!).

As a novelist I tend to write these characters all the time. I began it, after writing plenty of rather normal (humanly flawed) female characters, with the teenaged au pair in Pamela, or Virtue Reclaimed. I had a (female) friend read it and she asked, 'Why did you make her so beautiful?'

I said, 'If she weren't beautiful, she would have no power.'  Men flock to Pamela, because she is beautiful. (She has a knockout figure in fact.) But once they learn the other two things about her-- she is very bright (genius IQ) and very committed to premarital chastity-- they can't cope. Since they can't deny her beauty (since men are all essentially visual), they attempt to take down her brains, by debating at length with her (the book is full of these arguments, many based on reality), usually about why she won't go to bed with them. In the end, of course, Pamela marries beyond her expectations-- and I won't reveal more than that.

I have sort of kept to this heroine type in Deirdre, the Wanderer, essentially a foil to Pamela. Deirdre messes up just about everything; but at least she keeps (most of) her virtue. She is rather normal in brains and appearance, which is to say she is much more in both than she believes she is. Another heroine, in a very different context, is Janine, a first-person narrator in a fantasy-world series. Janine is more beautiful than Deirdre, normal intellectually, and less virtuous; but she is still essentially unattainable unless the boy of her dreams rises to meet her on her pedestal.

Most of what I write is very old-fashioned-- even chivalric literature. But this is what isn't being done today, in film, TV or novels. Much of what we see or read today (Hunger Games, Revolution, Pretty Little Liars) may start out well but fades into banal normalcy. I think we need heroines who are sharp, witty, resourceful and chaste whilst still able to look and act like ladies in ALL situations. THIS is the kind of girl character that would make guys read the book.

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The Initiation of Janine

After a long wait (both by me and by some readers), this series is properly launched.  The novella The Initiaion of Janine is, if not the first ever, the first of the ‘A Tale of Two Paradises’ tales to be offered in both e-book and printed-book form.  It’s set in the fanciful world of the British Paradise Islands, a ‘long-forgotten arm of the British Empire’, somewhere in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (west of the Galapagos, north of Easter Island, east of Tahiti, south of Hawaii.  You figure it out).

Janine is a sweet little girl, indubitably cute and rather ordinary except for a few standout attributes which she will tell you about in her narration.  She is young– only second form, at the start– but is appreciably intellectual and tends to be a little more mature than most of her friends, who really are the embodiment of ‘normal’ girls in the BPI at this time.  They giggle and tease each other, play on swings (though they are ‘too big’), visit the beach, shop, and look at or dream about boys.  They are also sweetly affectionate with each other, and– at least to (too) many Western minds– extraordinarily ladylike, even prudish.

Janine’s story is about how, by degrees, she gradually comes to balance her own native prudishness with the desires and needs of the mature young lady she is, perhaps too rapidly, becoming.  It’s worth noting that part of the magic of the Paradise Islands is that the standards for maturity are younger and more comprehensive than they are in England or in the ’States.  As it says in the Foreword:

As a vestige of the formerly indigenous Polynesian culture, the age of majority for most milestones is young; at fifteen a Paradisian citizen may marry, enter into labour or tenant contracts, leave school, or engage in consensual sexual relations.  Though precocious, this right of young people to initiate and conduct their natural lives on their own is inextricably conjoined to the unwavering sense of propriety as established and regulated by the British– for example, education and job training are comprehensive, there is little public-assistance for the able-bodied, and judicial penalties for abuse of decency statutes tend to be harsh and an adequate deterrent to transgression.  Therefore it is vital to not judge too quickly on appearances; or, if one does, he had best assume all is much saner, safer, more modest and more dignified than it seems at first glance.

For those who have read more of my work, the theme of the eager ingenue embarking, not entirely by choice, on a course of social enlightenment will seem familiar.  It’s a favourite because it reminds us of the sad inevitability that all innocence is fleeting; that, once lost, some degree of innocence is lost forever; that it is true that you can’t un-ring a bell so we'd better appreciate what we were like before we knew what it sounded like.  But there is also a great opportunity, even for the one undergoing such profound and irrevocable change, to consciously retain the most important elements of virtue.  Growing older does not mean losing all goodness; it merely means one must develop an independent sense of what’s wrong and what’s right and to conduct oneself with a responsibility to one’s self and to those who matter.  Janine’s story is the story of one who, having realised she may have flung herself ahead rather earlier than she may have liked, regains her self-control and self-respect and learns to conduct her own behaviour on her own (eminently respectable) terms.

I wrote in The Absolutist: ‘Absence of commission or experience is not equal to virtue, which is the responsible and deliberate exercise and restraint of free will. ’  (http://jonniecometsabsolutist.blogspot.com/p/the-tenets-precepts-belonging-to-neo.html)

I always seem to come back to virtue as a principal theme in all my work.

For the curious, a preview is available.  This excerpt represents the first chapter of a ten-chapter work, somewhere about 11% of the total.  This should be sufficient to give an idea of the novel’s pacing, plot and character development, style and substance, as well as to introduce the unique story setting.  The paperback version of the book contains an addenda, edited by Colin and me, including footnotes for local ‘lingo’ and specific terms that won’t be familiar to people who don’t live in the BPI (which, if you think about it, is everyone in the real world!).

This is from someone else's book but it's funny.

A preview is available here– https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1175206

The paperback will be available shortly (mid-August-?).  The novella edition contains the glossed terms and the manga-styled artwork.

A ‘deluxe compilation’ is coming out as well; this contains The Initiation of Janine and also the next three episodes in Janine’s story, with addenda including glossed terms, maps, other documents and the artwork.  This shall be the model for further stories within the JOP and other ‘T2P’ story arcs: about 250-270 pages, amounting to four, five, maybe six separate but sequential episodes, with interesting add-ons such as maps, diagrams, lingo terms and cool (almost-saucy) artwork.

The Kindle e-text is available now–  http://www.amazon.com/Initiation-Janine-Paradise-Form-20010107-ebook/dp/B002JCT1NE/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8  This contains endnotes (not glossed in the body of the text; you have to scroll back and forth, the only way Kindle allows one to publish it) but no maps and no artwork.

  

As ever I appreciate all relevant and considerate comments and look forward to seeing this get popular.  Now it’s all up to you! 

* * *

A book is not a cake

from Yahoo! Answers:

Can you accurately determine if the plot of a book is good if you only read one chapter?

I'm asking about books in general.

Answer:

from Jonnie Comet


A good book should be good all over.  That said, many times the prospective reader/buyer isn't aware of the further content of the book from one chapter.  It may not be the style or skill of the author he notices or dislikes; it may just be the plot or theme of the book that he presumes to have assessed from the first chapter.  So it's entirely possible that a really well-written book with a truly gripping plot may just not appeal to someone who examines only one chapter (like an agent or publisher); and so that party drops the book and says 'Ta; but I won't.'

It's another case of how so many these days are looking for immediate gratification. We want the first seven words of the book to be good; and if they're not we claim to be already 'bored' with it.  If some will only read the first chapter, imagine when that begins to be only the first page, or first paragraph, or first sentence.  Can any of us truly judge a book on so little a sampling of it?  And, if so, what is the point of generating any work of literature at all?  (Maybe we should just sell our Tweets from now on.)

In John Boorman's Excalibur, Merlin compares life to a biscuit: 'What do you know if it, till you have tasted it? And then, of course, it's too late.' But for those who would say 'You don't have to eat the whole cake to know that it's good,' I would contend that a book is NOT akin to a cake.  A cake should be homogenous all the way through.  A book is full of varying tasty bits in diverse places, some of which are meant to take you by surprise-- so you won't have any inkling of them from the initial passage anyway.  The best way to decide if you'll like a book is to know something of its theme, characters, style and plot beforehand; and that's what good back-cover and promotional blurbs are for (and why we pay those who compose them the good money, after all).  If, after believing the book will grab, respect and arrest your interest, you find the book is nothing but abject naff, that's what 'bad reviews' are for.   :)


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On writing cross-gender narrative

from Yahoo! Answers Canada:

Open Question

 

Help with a short story question..?

I read 'The Groom Service' by Michael Dorris but there is one question that I'm stumped on.  It asks: 

'What impact does a male author have on the content of the story?'

The short story is basically about a Native boy in a society where woman rule and ultimately in order to marry his prospective wife he needs to do things like hunt in order to see that he is worthy.

The author of this short story is male but I'm not sure how he would have any impact on this woman-dominated society. Any ideas?

First answer (still-open question)

Jonnie Comet

I think it is vital for any author to develop a sense of himself, or herself, OUTSIDE that of the characters he or she writes. In other words, the author must not automatically identify himself or herself with characters, even the principal ones-- and especially when it comes to gender.
 
I have always written fiction, since I was 15. This is a very long time now. For the first 20 years I tended to write in the first person, when telling a story with a male protagonist, and in the third-person omniscient when it came to stories about other principal characters. The male narrators were easy-- they were like myself. I now view this as essentially immature for a writer; but in those days I was immature as a writer and it was all I knew. In writing with female main characters, I was essentially an outsider, an observer of female points of view but not an actor of them. (I mean, how could I have been otherwise? I am male-- always have been.) Even when I got married, my wife was still a separate person from me.
 
Then two things happened-- I got America OnLine in the 1990s, and I raised two daughters (no sons). I learned female points of view by observing them much more closely, and I developed a few online novels in which I posted the mentality of a female character and allowed readers to interact with it (in today's terms we would call this a 'blog'). I learned how other men, other than myself, treat women, almost as though I were in the place of the women, and was able to incorporate that into my work. The prime result was my epistolary (first-person, in journals or letters) novel Pamela; or Virtue Reclaimed. 
 
Virtue Reclaimed was modelled on the 1740 epistolary novel Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded, an epistolary novel by then-53-year-old Samuel Richardson who drew on his experience as a teen reading novels to girls in sewing circles (and hearing all their chatter and gossip) and his later experience in writing etiquette guides. From reading his Virtue Rewarded I learned not only that a male writer can depict a female POV credibly (the book was a best-seller in the 1740s and the first novel printed in America) but that it just may appeal to female writers all the more. Everyone who read bits of my Virtue Reclaimed has adored it-- their most common question being, 'However did you get that young girl's POV so perfectly?' 
 
Currently I am promoting Deirdre, the Wanderer, a series about a teenaged runaway who hitchhikes the world on a shoestring. All the reviews have praised the accuracy of details and the believability of the character herself. Deirdre is as real an ordinary teenaged girl as ever there was in literature-- 'modest, lovably imperfect Deirdre, who may well be one of modern literature's most engaging protagonists' (from the publisher's press release for the second instalment of the series).
 
It all comes down to the writer's skill, not only with words and writing but in his or her empathy for the human condition. For example, in my series, Deirdre isn't described in terms of her hair colour, height, lips texture or bra size, like many physically-minded men might have done. In fact that stuff is never even mentioned at all. That's too subjective and irrelevant anywhere. If I called her blonde and shapely, slender brunettes might not want to relate. The more important point is that Deirdre is any girl, anywhere, suffering the same stuff as any girl would in the same situations-- and you fill in the details about what she looks like with your own impressions.
 
If I have to say so myself (which I don't), I am apparently pretty good at this. I lay it down to my inherent and intuitive respect for all girls and women everywhere. And I believe it's this kind of consideration that can make any writer ascend to some higher level in being an observer of human interaction-- as Jane Austen always claimed one must be.
 
'If you can do it, do it.' --from Love Me Do, by Jonnie Comet (that's me!).


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If you were forced to spend 24 hours with a random stranger...

from Yahoo! Answers UK

Resolved Question

If were forced to spend 24 hours with a random stranger... how would the façade of each personality change?

How would start out probably? (personality façade)... and how would change during each 4 hours or more and why? how quickly first façade would go away and why or how depends

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Jonnie Comet
 

I think that entirely depends on the people involved. Some people might not appear (to others' eyes) to have changed at all. But given such a situation, like if these people were alone together in a trapped train, or something, I think it's a given that they would both change profoundly after this.

An example is the Discovery Channel show Naked and Afraid in which a man and a woman who have never met are dropt off in an alien place, deprived of all their possessions and clothes (except for one item each) and given a challenge-- to go somewhere, to make something, etc. No matter how independent or bold they may be in the rest of their lives, the pairs invariably find that they are profoundly vulnerable to the world about them-- but NOT to each other. They MUST work as a team, or fail-- and failure can mean actually dying of exposure, animal attacks, bug bites, malnutrition, anything.

I think this is pretty analogous to your question. In short, the people would gradually become more trusting with each other, open, honest, even friendly.

Permit me another example. In my novel Deirdre, the Adventurer I include a scene in which teenaged runaway Deirdre must share an Indian railway compartment with two Indian uni students and a nun, none of whom she has ever known before. The first time she goes to the loo she takes all her luggage with her. Gradually, by degrees, she comes to trust these women enough to actually leave the train at the ten-minute stops, leaving all her worldly goods behind with them, to get fruit from the stands for them all, paying with her own money. She has learnt that a stranger is no different from herself-- to the strangers, she is the stranger, vice versa.

I think strangers thrown together is a marvellous vehicle for storytelling, in fiction or in nonfiction, because it permits the storyteller to teach a wonderful lesson about human nature.

* * *

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

thanks

On having a personal library

from Yahoo! Answers

Open Question

I want to start a mini library- where do I start?

Something in between $150-200 is my price range for buying books.  What size of bookshelf do I need?  Is it easy to find bargain books?  Is it cheaper in Indigo/Chapters or online?


Jonnie Comet

I can't answer this question because I didn't 'plan' my 'library'.  I just acquired books I wanted to read and read them. Now I have probably a thousand books, mostly paperback versions of major literature (chiefly 18th-C novels of manners), young teens' lit (because I taught it), young and self-published authors' works (because I encourage them), and philosophy and history works (because it is tangential to my major). Shelves came because I needed them.  This collection, including several hundred antiques, is probably worth six or seven thousand US dollars.

That said, in the 18th C. it was common for people to 'plan' household libraries. In a great house, a gentleman with no particular desire for reading would come into a room called 'the library', and he would have to furnish it. People bought books by the running foot-- 'I need 147 running feet of books for these shelves' --and then hire a guy to go into the city and procure them. The gentleman didn't care what they were-- he would never read them. They were just wall dressing.

Flash forward to The Great Gatsby (1925) in which Owl Eyes is wandering about JG's great library and takes down a few volumes, observing that the pages have not been cut. Books were printed in multiples of 16 pages so that the paper of the pages could be folded first and bound into the book. Then someone would have to slice the folded ends that remained on the outside (which is why some 'old' books have rough-edged or ripped pages). Owl Eyes marvels at this. 'What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too-- didn't cut the pages.'  He applauds Gatsby, who was trying to make a great impression with this library of books he would never read, for being honest enough to have not cut the pages to make it look like he HAD read them. It was phony and Gatsby let it look that way.

It sounds to me you want a Gatsby library. The best libraries are NOT impressive collections of the 'right' books. They are just collections of what we readers like to have about us, so we can savour seeing these books over and over, and savour reading them over and over. Get the books YOU like, ignore everyone else, and don't call it a 'library' at all. It's for only you.

(That reminds me-- as I am moving onto my boat I can no longer keep all my books. Anyone want to peruse MY library and take home a few? --wink)

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What makes a good story ending?

from Yahoo! Answers--

What makes a good ending?

When watching some films or reading some books, I find that while the beginning and middle parts can be amazing, the ending can sometimes disappoint. Are there essential parts to every ending that make it a good one? If so, what would you say they are?

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Jonnie Comet

The mode of ending you choose has mostly to do with the story you wrote. For a comedy, the ending must satisfy the readers' common sensibility (the word comedy being based not on humour but in the word common, such as in communion, community, etc.). Give the people what they expect-- the bad guys go to prison, the lovers get married.

For a tragedy, the one we have come to like most must die or suffer, from some fault of his own but one which we would prefer to forgive. Jack Sparrow at the end of the 2nd 'Pirates' movie is sort of like this. Shakespeare's tragic heroes, such as Lear, are like this. After all his growth of character, Lear still dies. This makes us sad.

In gothics, the main message is amoral or naturalistic (naturalism being an offshoot of the gothic). Fate, chance, luck, or circumstances beyond control determine the outcome.  Lord Of The Flies is like this. See Nicholas Sparks' Message In A Bottle for a really egregious example of a pointless ending-- not anything that can be expected, only random. (Really any Nicholas Sparks ending is like this, very Hemingwayesque. --ick.) This tends to frustrate readers and audiences (like me) who want some sense of order or righteousness at the end.

Chief amongst the appeal of an ending should be some element of surprise. In a comedy, for which the ending is a foregone conclusion throughout the whole story, you can still provide something interesting, such as two secondary characters getting married as well (A Midsummer Night's Dream), or the couple coming into a fortune simply for being just such good people, when they would have been satisfied just to have each other (Our Mutual Friend). In a tragedy, you can provide some glimmer of hope in that the Horatio who will take over the kingdom gets a lovely bride or an added accolade into the bargain.

In a gothic, there isn't much hope for surprise-- the ending itself is a surprise, typically unfulfilling-- the hero doesn't win by his own devices but is saved by a random passing ship or because the rope holding the villain breaks or because an animal comes and eats his enemies. It means nothing-- there is no 'message'. These are the ones you probably hate the most.

I do not mention cliffhangers between instalments of a series because they're not really endings. There is a whole set of other rules for a good cliffhanger.

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Regarding spelling - Learnt, Dreamt, Leapt, Burnt, Knelt, Slept, Spelt...etc

from Yahoo! Answers--  

Resolved Question

A question regarding spelling - Learnt, Dreamt, Leapt, Burnt, Knelt, Slept, Spelt...etc?

I have grown up using words like learnt or slept or spelt...etc all my life. I watch TV (I have the subtitles on due to sometime being unable to hear things properly), and even then they're said and spelt with the 't' on the end (instead of it being learned, it's learnt for example). 
 

I have always been taught that this is correct. 
 

Recently, however, I've had people come to me and basically pull me to pieces by saying that I don't know how to spell or write. They say that dreamt isn't even a word and that it's dreamed - the same for many, many other words. Basically, they're saying that all of this is incorrect, even though I hear it and even read it every day (I was watching BBCs Merlin yesterday and I swear Gaius saying 'learnt'). 
 

A few days ago I think someone pulled me up because I had used burnt, and then said that I was wrong and that burnt wasn't even a real word - that it was burned, even though burnt sounded completely right to me. 
 

I don't understand. Until now (even in school), I was never told that words like those were 'unacceptable', and yet now I find myself attacked by some people who say things like 'you can't even spell correctly' or 'those words don't even exist'. 
 

I'm really confused. 
 

Do they exist? Have I been spelling things wrong all these years? 

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

 

Jonnie Comet

The difference between '-t' and '-ed' has fallen largely into one of usage, not strict rules. As an author I found myself doing this too inconsistently and finished up making up my own 'rule' for it-- and then following it. I call it the Burnt Toast Rule. 

I use the '-t' ending for past participles and the '-ed' ending for simple past. This follows the use of when the verb form is being used as a participial, such as in 'burnt toast'. You would not say you ate 'burned toast' for breakfast; you would always say (or mean to say) 'burnt toast'. So for the past participle I follow the same rule-- 'I burned the toast' and 'I had burnt the toast.' Consistently used, this begins to make sense. 

The problem in US usage is that people (particularly young, less-well-read people) tend to *assume* the '-t' ending is either standard, regular usage (it's not, in the US) or else indicative of an elevated awareness of language (read that: pretentiousness). I had a journalism student, writing about the cheerleaders for the paper, write that they 'ampt up their routines'. This failed the spelling and editorial checks and I asked her about it. She said, 'Yeah, you know; like to amp it up.' 

This-- I discerned-- was (then, 2002) slang usage for 'amplified' (after which you wouldn't use up anyway). I said, 'Then spell it correctly.' --meaning 'amped'. 

She thought the '-t' ending made words look more intelligent (really?) and must have seen that the ampt really didn't look or work well at all, but stuck to her misconception. 

Unfortunately UK usage is falling under too much US influence and is becoming more of a mishmash than ever. For writers the best tactic is to gain a familiarity with the most formal and/or most educated British writers using standard written and edited English ('SWEE') and to learn from and perhaps emulate them.   I have the Prince of Wales' excellent 1984 architecture book A Vision Of Britain and determined that whatever usage the POW is using *must* be the *proper* form; so I tend to use that when it matters, such as in third-person/omniscient narration and in nonfiction.

   

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Asker's Comment:

All the answers were really useful and pointed out the difference between British and American English (didn't realise there were that many differences). Thanks Jonnie for the 'burnt toast rule' - it actually made things a lot clearer :) Thanks

This question about "How long does it tak… " was originally asked on Yahoo! Answers United Kingdom

How long does it take to become a good writer?

from Yahoo! Answers--

How long does it take to become a good writer?

My writing skills suck, and that's putting it nicely. I was wondering how long it takes to become a good writer and how to become a really good writer?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Jonnie Comet

It takes decades.

Start by reading.  Read all the literature you can.  Enjoy and understand the stories; but pay attention to the authors' craft-- how they use the language, how they describe things, how they set up the plot and provide suspense, and so on.  There is nothing wrong with sort of copying another author's style, at least when you are getting started.  Many people have begun this way.  I wrote Love Me Do as a modern (1970s) take on The Great Gatsby.  My style is/was very different from Fitzgerald's; but even when I teach Gatsby in the classroom today I am sort of amazed at myself for having understood (and sort of copied) his book so well... when I was 17.  And Love Me Do is not at all a bad book.

The second thing, as you begin to read a lot, is to try to discern good writing from bad.  Avoid Nicholas Sparks and Stephanie Meyer.  They tell great stories but their craft is not worth emulating.  They write after their audience-- 8th-year girls.  Move on from that. Read Vonnegut, Rand, Delterfield, Trollope. Explore stuff you never thought you would like. Again, study craft. 

Sting, the bass player for The Police, once said, 'Whenever I run out of song ideas I go back to my craft.'  He sits and plays the bass for hours on end, for days on end. And we thought this guy was good; and still he practises.  Why? --because there is truth in the adage that one learns well by doing.   So, do.  Write everything and anything that comes into your mind.   Read, think of something, write that down.  Critique films, TV, the books you read-- decide what is bad and good about each.  Criticise your own writing from days/months/years ago.   Improve it.  This is not playing for an audience; it is practice.  But it's the only way you can grow.  To avoid attempts, even when they (will) end in failure, is to choose to not improve.  You can't pitch a ball till you try to do it.   So, try.  Fail.  Learn.  Try again.  Fail again.   Learn more.  And repeat. 

As you write, go back to the books you liked, read alternate passages, and compare them.  Is your grammar/mechanics/spelling/usage equivalent to that guy's?  If not, why not?   Evaluate and improve.  This is called editing.   It's been said that there are no great writers; there are only diligent editors.  All writers are editors before they are 'famous published authors'. Get out of your head the idea that the first endeavour is the purest, the sweetest, the most valuable because it's so pure and sweet and original.  That's Romantic; and whatever they write, no good writers are purely Romantic.   They believe in hard work-- and that lies in editing, revising, critiquing, really looking judiciously at what they have written. There is nothing accidental or innocent or 'pure' about it.  All art, including literature, must be deliberate.  It's what makes it 'art' (artifice: that which Man creates).

During the editing process, I take my work in a 3-ring binder to the beach.  (It's where I live.)   I sit there reading like it's someone else's work, like it's from a student or someone, with a blue pen in hand, and truly beat up the whole text.  'Stop repeating,' I write.   'Delete this,' I write.  'What idiot wrote this?' I write.  I put myself into the mindset of the reader.  Then I fix it so 'he' will like it (even when it's just me). It's all about the reader.   If you don't serve the reader, why are you writing?  You write to be read-- that is the definition of an author.  So think of how it reads when you read it.  If it rots, fix it.   That's your job.

I'm sorry for preaching at you but there is really no easy way to do this without just doing it.  There is no app for your iPhone that you can buy and install and *become* a good writer.  You have to just start doing it, like riding a skateboard.   And you will fall on your bottom and become injured-- in this case, in your ego-- and you deserve to get slapped about a bit by it and then you will learn.  And you will go at it again, and again.  And then you will have succeeded, because you will have succeeded.  And no-one can ever take that from you.

There are plenty of easier things to do.  You could sell flowers in a shop.  You could flip burgers at McDonald's.  You could deliver newspapers (does anyone still do that?).  But you want to write.  So what are you reading this drivel for?  Start writing. 

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Asker's Comment:

I thank you for giving your time to help me and help me realize that it's not going to be an easy process, more like a difficult one. This was a good answer, thank you.

This question about "How long does it tak… " was originally asked on Yahoo! Answers United Kingdom

  

Jonnie Comet on writing & novels

from a PR flyer, 12 September 2011--

Who, or what, is a Jonnie Comet?

One of my professors once asked me this, seeing it on some piece of text, and even some of my students have been stumped by it, which I suppose was part of the intention. Actually the name was a suggestion by my brother Rino for the name of a new band in 1978 or 1979. I thought it sounded too 1950s and rejected it out of hand.

Sometime after that I altered the spelling to appear androgynous and created an on-stage persona, some cross between Luke Skywalker and Robin Hood, a naïve though effective futuristic do-gooder featured in the songs of the Archer In The Wood and Shoot For The Stars LP projects.  By the end of the 1980s I had gone to work for corporate America and made something of a name for myself in a very specific industry; and so, when it came time to hawk Love Me Do to publishers, I chose to retain my old band’s name as a nom de plume to keep the two career paths from converging.   In each discrete circle, in order to maintain the separation, I do not mention the other name except, if it comes up, as a third-person entity.

When did you first become interested in writing?

As a child I read copiously, early and well-- in kindergarten the teacher used to have me bring in books, sit me on a table and have me read to the class since no-one else could read at kindergarten in those days. I was two or three reading levels ahead by the time I started 7th year. In critical-writing assignments I was an original voice that most teachers didn’t know what to do with. If they were mere pedants they would nitpick my grammar and spelling; if they had any sort of vision as educators they got used to just giving me an A if it had my name on top of it.

The earliest original story I can remember writing was in 5th year when a friend suckered me into doing a standup comedy routine for the class (not for an assignment, but just because) and gave me the job of writing copy for a mock news report (like a 5th-year version of SNL’s ‘Weekend Update’!). By the time I was 15 I was into the habit of writing down really cool dreams I had; one of them actually became the core of Love Me Do.

What did you do before writing novels?

I have written fiction with the aim of developing novels since I was about 15. But throughout my adult life I really have worked as a draughtsman, a liquor salesman, a boatbuilder, a delivery skipper, a private tutor, a warehouseman, a janitor, a carpenter, a skateboard assembler, a surfboard shaper, a purchasing agent, a designer of yacht hardware, a bookshop clerk, a teacher of secondary English, and of course as a working songwriter, producer and musician with a variety of outfits before and after The Jonnie Comet Band in the early 1980s.

What experiences have you had that you believe contribute to your voice as a writer?

At the age of 19 I found myself dispensing advice to younger friends (who were mostly girls, essentially groupies of the band) in Surf City. I cannot say that I had any more knowledge than they did about their personal social-life matters; but they trusted me enough to consult me with them and I did my best to rely on common sense, moral propriety and good will in helping them through them. The experience taught me two things: that I cared about people, especially young and impressionable ones, and that I had some skill as a communicator of concepts and ideals.

This sensitivity for the whole prospect of being a teenager was further nurtured when I began teaching secondary school and discovered I had students who often took me into their confidence with issues they would not mention to their own parents. They trusted in my guidance because they already knew for sure that I was a staunchly moral adult who knew how to listen and truly cared. I have always regarded their faith in me as a sort of sacred trust and a very high honour; and I like to believe I have been of great comfort to them all.

I realised that the reason I wanted to teach school was the same as the reason I wanted to be a rock-and-roll star: because I believed I had a message of honesty, decency and unconditional love to convey to other people. If I did not make much money in this pursuit, I did gain some peace of mind that having followed a course of virtue I may have helped people be happier and healthier along the way.

Aside from my worldly experiences in work and play I think this getting to know myself and what made me tick as a person is the crucial key to the relevance and uniqueness of Jonnie Comet’s voice as a writer.

What do you think is the most important feature of any novel?

All good stories are about characters. The definition of a ‘character’ can be very broad; good books have been written about animals (The Bear), computers (2001), or places (Ringworld). But what we look for is the development of some entity with whom we can feel empathy. Even when stories are inherently plot-driven, such as those Clancy writes, there are still people within them to be affected by, and to affect, the course of the events. When we recognise the humanity within the characters, we put ourselves in their places, feel what they feel, enter their struggles and cheer for their successes. We then realise that it’s been the book that does this to us, that gives us this gift; and that’s a book we consider a success at having entertained, enlightened and enlivened us. It's what I hope people will see in [Deirdre, the Wanderer].

What do you think makes a story worth reading?

Every ‘good’ story has some combination of good characters, good plot, and good style-- including good mechanical use of the language. Details are well-researched and sensibly presented.   There is a balance between narrative and dialogue-- some things are better told through action and some through the characters themselves.  Most of all the story needs a voice.  A first-person narrator should be engaging, inviting and then keeping us in the story. I like to think Deirdre is one of these-- you will read the story because she’s the one telling it. But a third-person ‘voice’ can be just as engaging, a character in itself that keeps our interest.  My favourite ‘voices’ come from 18th-C authors such as Henry Fielding and Ann Radcliffe; but that’s my taste and others will have other preferences.

Ultimately a good ‘story’ needs a good message, some theme to leave us with when it’s come to the end. This is vital, sort of the raison d’etre of the whole book. Absent this, we will wonder what we were supposed to have got out of it; its worth will have seemed purely superficial.

In your opinion what makes a book a work of ‘literature’?

All literature must have at its core this two-part rationale: to educate and to entertain. In no small part the proportion of these two determines the style and genre. For example all good lectures and sermons are literature, because they must do both, perhaps more so to educate than to entertain. Comedy sketches are literature but may be in the reverse proportion. By this definition straight news reporting is not literature; its purpose, though to be interesting, is not to entertain but to inform. Conversely a story with no underlying educative message is only fluff.

The worth of a given book as literature depends on its author’s management of this proportion.  DTW is literature that entertains the reader with a clever story most engagingly told; but beyond that it is a lesson in the necessity of having to face negative circumstances of your own making. The reader is subtly cautioned throughout that an exciting concept such as striking out on your own might finish up being fraught with yet-unforeseen difficulties, which, perhaps due to pride or naïveté, no teenager ever wants to admit could actually exist, let alone befall her personally.

Is it true you live on a boat?

In season my home base is my sailboat. It is not big but it is an extension of both my need for limitless freedom and my need for a cosy cave to curl up in. In the off-season (or when it just gets too cold, rainy, or otherwise awkward) I will crash on friends or family. For some reason they tolerate me. Though by nature I am a ‘free spirit’, I have often found myself tied-down by circumstances and so the writing of Deirdre, the Wanderer has been a catharsis for me, a way of living vicariously through a fictional narrative-- the same impression I hope readers get from the book.

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