IGX

"A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for and can carry off." Archibald MacLeish, "On the Teaching of Writing," in Writing in America 88, 90 (John Fischer & Robert B. Silvers eds., 1960).

Not theft so much as finger exercises, like a musician learning scales.

When I teach this stuff --- as if it can be taught --- I sometimes have students write "parodies" of authors they admire. Just a paragraph of Hemingway or Updike or whatever. The point isn't to be funny, it is to sound exactly like the person. Exactly. There are two benefits:

1. YOu can see how they do it. To a degree.

2. In the parts where your sample diverges from the style of target --- and if you like the way the divergence sounds --- you are beginning to discover your own voice.

Why not just hire a ghostwriter? JFK did and got a Pulitzer for it.

hoosierpete wrote:Why not just hire a ghostwriter? JFK did and got a Pulitzer for it.

How do the ghostwriters do it?

They hire gifted writers who don't waste their fucking time trading tripe with virtual nitwits.

Stealing is a sin.

I could swear I've read this shit somewhere before...

Fat Cat wrote:Stealing is a sin.

Jesus died for my sins. The more I sin, the more meaningful his death was.

seeahill wrote:Not theft so much as finger exercises, like a musician learning scales.

When I teach this stuff --- as if it can be taught --- I sometimes have students write "parodies" of authors they admire. Just a paragraph of Hemingway or Updike or whatever. The point isn't to be funny, it is to sound exactly like the person. Exactly. There are two benefits:

1. YOu can see how they do it. To a degree.

2. In the parts where your sample diverges from the style of target --- and if you like the way the divergence sounds --- you are beginning to discover your own voice.

Who else do you like to have your students try to mimic? Hemingway seems easy. Short sentences, staccato beat. Hammett and Chandler , or even Elmore Leonard, seem easy to mimic. Other writers seem harder. I've never read anything by Updike.

Voice is one test for a great writer. One thing that I love about this place is that a number of guys really have a voice in their writing that's first rate.

Hebrew Hammer wrote:

seeahill wrote:Not theft so much as finger exercises, like a musician learning scales.

When I teach this stuff --- as if it can be taught --- I sometimes have students write "parodies" of authors they admire. Just a paragraph of Hemingway or Updike or whatever. The point isn't to be funny, it is to sound exactly like the person. Exactly. There are two benefits:

1. YOu can see how they do it. To a degree.

2. In the parts where your sample diverges from the style of target --- and if you like the way the divergence sounds --- you are beginning to discover your own voice.

Who else do you like to have your students try to mimic? Hemingway seems easy. Short sentences, staccato beat. Hammett and Chandler , or even Elmore Leonard, seem easy to mimic. Other writers seem harder. I've never read anything by Updike.

Voice is one test for a great writer. One thing that I love about this place is that a number of guys really have a voice in their writing that's first rate.

You'd be surprised about Hemingway. He packs a lot of information into a tiny amount of words. Every time I've tried to mimic him (or others like him, like Raymond Carver, IMO) I fall short. I wind up including short, terse sentences that don't contribute anything relevant to the story.

One of my teachers told me that Ralph Ellison started as a jazz musician, and when he wanted to develop his writing he would "practice his chops" by copying word-for-word the stories of writers he admired. Seems like a silly exercise to me, but it worked for him.

Jake Patrick wrote:
One of my teachers told me that Ralph Ellison started as a jazz musician, and when he wanted to develop his writing he would "practice his chops" by copying word-for-word the stories of writers he admired. Seems like a silly exercise to me, but it worked for him.

And Hunter Thompson typed out an entire copy of the Sun Also Rises.

HH,
You have them copy what they admire, the way an aspiring guitarist might try to play an admired guitar solo note for note.

seeahill wrote:

Jake Patrick wrote:
One of my teachers told me that Ralph Ellison started as a jazz musician, and when he wanted to develop his writing he would "practice his chops" by copying word-for-word the stories of writers he admired. Seems like a silly exercise to me, but it worked for him.

And Hunter Thompson typed out an entire copy of the Sun Also Rises.

HH,
You have them copy what they admire, the way an aspiring guitarist might try to play an admired guitar solo note for note.

Very interesting. I teach lawyers to write and have published a number of articles on the subject, which I'm now putting into a book for the American Bar Association. Part of my approach is to drum voice out of lawyers, and teach them instead to learn to write and think clearly. Once they have that down, they can focus on varying sentence structure and improving their use of powerful verbs.

My feeling is that only great writers use voice well. For the rest of us, attempting to project our voice in writing leads to what I call the Italian suit syndrome: You see some guy in an Italian tailored suit, and he looks great. So you go out and buy one. You end up looking like a stuffed pig.

I've never taught mimicry as a writing tool, but will try it out on my own as I read pieces I admire. My approach is to provide rules for writing. I may have to steal this one and add some version of a rule to improve style by copying out writers who write clearly and who one admires.

HH,
Every writer uses voice and the more idiosyncratic the better. Yes, a lawyer doesn't want to inject his personality into a brief and a conversational tone will detract from the importance of the proceeding. A lawyer writing for the court is writing a dead serious parody of the legal style.

But if you're writing for publication, you'd better have a voice. People should be able to read a graph or two and know who it is. Write in your own voice: don't wear someone else's voice. Find your own. The more comfortable you are with your voice the easier writing becomes.


So you have Hemingway. Short description declarative sentences, but underneath, in the subtext, it is about an unvoiced pain, and courage to face it...

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY


It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.

"Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.

"Why?"

"He was in despair."

"What about?"

"Nothing."

"How do you know it was nothing?"

"He has plenty of money.



Or you have Hunter Thompson,who studied Hemingway,typed out an entire book to see how the master did it, and then ends up sounding nothing like him. You couldn't mistake Hunter's voice for anyone else. It's Hunter Thompson.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . ."And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

Or Mark Twain, who tossed off the fussy suits and watch fobs of writing like an Englishman and wrote the first decent American novel in an American conversational voice...

Huckleberry Finn

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Lesser writers,like Tim Cahill,use the conversational model, though the conversation is modeled on their own voice. Not Mark Twain's, Quite often, friends will tell me that reading my work is "just like listening to you in a bar. Except you're not so fucking drunk." I consider that a great complement. Except the drunk part.



By Tim Cahill

There were a dozen of us, riding the immense central Asian grassland on sturdy Mongolian horses. When I glanced back for a view of the glacier and the sacred mountain we had just come from, I saw two tiny specks inching down the steep, windswept hillside. I turned in my saddle and glassed the hill with a small Russian telescope. The riders were coming toward us at a stiff trot. They were at least two miles back and about 1,000 feet above us. Each man held something in his right hand. I could plainly see the glint of metal.

"They carrying?" one of the Americans asked.

"Yeah," I said, "both of them."

Or you could take a great book, rewrite it into a piece of unreadable dreck, and be called a great author:

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." T.S. Eliot

I always wonder how much voice makes it through a translation. I only know one language, so no first hand experience.

I'm pretty sure that Jorge Luis Borges's voice made it through.

Dreamtigers
In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger-not the jaguar, that spotted "tiger" that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the Parana and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of war, in a castle atop an elephant. I would stand for hours on end before one of the cages at the zoo; I would rank vast encyclopedias and natural history books by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those pictures, I who cannot recall without error a woman's brow or smile.) My childhood outgrown, the tigers and my passion for them faded, but they are still in my dreams. In that underground sea or chaos, they still endure. As I sleep I am drawn into some dream or other, and suddenly I realize that it's a dream. At those moments, I often think: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will, and since I have unlimited power, I am going to bring forth a tiger.

Oh, incompetence! My dreams never seen to engender the creature I so hunger for. The tiger does appear, but it is all dried up, or it's flimsy-looking, or it has impure vagaries of shape or an unacceptable size, or it's altogether too ephemeral, or it looks more like a dog or bird than like a tiger.

seeahill wrote:HH,
Every writer uses voice and the more idiosyncratic the better. Yes, a lawyer doesn't want to inject his personality into a brief and a conversational tone will detract from the importance of the proceeding. A lawyer writing for the court is writing a dead serious parody of the legal style.

But if you're writing for publication, you'd better have a voice. People should be able to read a graph or two and know who it is. Write in your own voice: don't wear someone else's voice. Find your own. The more comfortable you are with your voice the easier writing becomes.

I do agree with you on the importance of voice, and I've developed my own style. It's easier in articles than in briefs, but the idea is the same. Be the reader's friend: Organize, be clear, avoid fluff, convey information with each sentence and word. Once you've got that down, use strong and precise words, especially verbs, mix up the sentence structure, write with your ear. Here's an article I just published:

************

Prospective franchisees can always negotiate their franchise agreements—even if the franchisor seems to carry all the negotiating power. Franchise agreements aren’t negotiated in a vacuum. Power, leverage, laws, relationships, and business smarts all create the general negotiation dynamics. In the first of a four-part series, here's a checklist of general considerations that affect the success of a negotiation.

Franchisor power. The franchisor’s flexibility is determined by the maturity and financial strength of the system. Burger King is less flexible; Burger Peasant is more.

Franchisee power. Cash-rich, multi-unit, experienced developers have more leverage in negotiation. Poor, single-unit novices have less. A related issue is that franchisors may have certain special needs that a franchisee can meet, and that can be leveraged for changes in the agreement.

Personal guarantees. Without a personal guaranty, the franchisee has the ultimate remedy – the ability to walk away from a deal. Just having the ability to walk enhances negotiating leverage during the contract term (“Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.” – Frederick the Great).

Relationships. With a good franchisor/franchisee relationship, the parties work issues out, franchisees are treated fairly, and everyone rows in the same direction. The contract, in some ways, becomes irrelevant. With a bad franchisor, the contract becomes very relevant but that’s only because it governs clash and conflict.

Equal protection statutes. Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Washington, Minnesota and California have statutes that require, essentially, equal treatment of franchisees and other states have equal protection provisions for certain types of clauses. Franchisors use these statutes as a reason not to negotiate, but they’ll budge if it’s in their interest to do so. The statutes have been interpreted to mean that, so long as the franchisor is not acting arbitrarily, the franchisor may treat franchisees individually taking into account the circumstances of the matter. That allows for a lot of leeway.

Relationship statutes. Over 20 states have statutes that offer specified protections to franchisees. As a general matter, these trump any provision in the franchise agreement to the contrary. The franchise agreement should acknowledge this and, for some states, provide a state-specific rider.

Franchisor obligations. Franchise agreements generally obligate (or allow, but don’t obligate) a franchisor to license a valid mark, instruct the franchisee in the system, offer training, and control proprietary supplies. The clauses on franchisor’s obligations probably take a few pages of a franchise agreement. The other 30-plus pages set out the franchisor’s rights against franchisees and the franchisees’ duties.

The AAFD Fair Franchising Standards. The American Association of Franchisees and Dealers has a set of fair franchising standards that it regularly reviews and updates. The standards serve as a good checklist to see how an agreement stacks up. Beware. Most agreements don’t stack up.

Prepare. Go through the contract thoroughly to think through all business aspects. If real estate, insurance, accounting, or financing issues are involved, check with your advisors or agents in these areas to see if business issues exist. Your due diligence here can raise “must negotiate” items. Your lawyer may not spot these issues unless you point out your business concerns. Also, call other franchisees who are in the system, who have failed, and who have been terminated. If the franchisor has an independent franchisee association, call the officers.

Vote with your feet. All other considerations aside, a prospective franchisee has to be prepared to walk from a deal. Many franchisors may not budge much on negotiation. If you don’t feel great about the franchisor’s management, its economic strength, or its track record, walk away from the deal. If you do feel great about the franchise, negotiate the best contract you can negotiate, and set out deal-breakers if any. If you end up with no deal-breakers, and you trust management and the concept, your best course may be proceeding knowing that the contract is biased in the franchisor’s favor.

Franchisor’s legitimate concerns. Franchises succeed because they start with a good model, make it replicable, and they have a business model that allows the franchisor and franchisee to each make money. Franchisors should also have the power to get rid of franchisees who are harming the system and to make sure only quality applicants are allowed to become franchisees. They also should have the flexibility to regularly update the system and move the brand forward. A consistent franchise agreement furthers these goals, and it’s in the franchisee’s interest for the system to succeed. Thus in many ways it’s in the franchisee’s interest for the franchisor to have a consistent agreement that furthers these goals.

The cost/benefit of negotiation. Paying a lawyer to do a thorough job of reviewing and negotiating a franchise agreement can be costly and time-consuming. Is it worth the cost and time? On the one hand, it would be penny-wise/pound-foolish to skimp on this process as the agreement will govern your business for many years and the standard agreement may have deal- breakers for you. On the other hand, you need to think through what’s important and what’s not, what risks you’re willing to assume, and the franchisor’s legitimate interests in consistency. There’s no one answer as to how hard to push other than to find a lawyer who’s not only smart and experienced in this area, but who has good judgment and common sense, and who will be able to advise you on the best course consistent with your interests and values.

One word of caution: This is only a checklist for brainstorming, and not the final word on any of the matters addressed. It's not a subsitute for that lawyer who’s not only smart and experienced in this area, but who also has good judgment and common sense

Hebrew Hammer wrote:Burger King is less flexible

Pilates?

Hebrew Hammer wrote:
Franchisor’s legitimate concerns. Franchises succeed because they start with a good model, make it replicable, and they have a business model that allows the franchisor and franchisee to each make money. Franchisors should also have the power to get rid of franchisees who are harming the system and to make sure only quality applicants are allowed to become franchisees. They also should have the flexibility to regularly update the system and move the brand forward. A consistent franchise agreement furthers these goals, and it’s in the franchisee’s interest for the system to succeed. Thus in many ways it’s in the franchisee’s interest for the franchisor to have a consistent agreement that furthers these goals.

The cost/benefit of negotiation. Paying a lawyer to do a thorough job of reviewing and negotiating a franchise agreement can be costly and time-consuming. Is it worth the cost and time? On the one hand, it would be penny-wise/pound-foolish to skimp on this process as the agreement will govern your business for many years and the standard agreement may have deal- breakers for you. On the other hand, you need to think through what’s important and what’s not, what risks you’re willing to assume, and the franchisor’s legitimate interests in consistency. There’s no one answer as to how hard to push other than to find a lawyer who’s not only smart and experienced in this area, but who has good judgment and common sense, and who will be able to advise you on the best course consistent with your interests and values.

Or you could ignore this and open an @fit franchise.

A triumph of clarity and organization, I'd say. And yes, an example using a bit of humor helps --- Burger Peasant --- plus you don't have to actually name a "more flexible" franchise. In my biz, we call this "tap dancing."