Filling pages with words

[Ordos]

When I was in school, my teachers in English class used to give me essay assignments with word quotas. They say "This essay must have at least one thousand words". Sometimes I simply could not think of much to say. So I resorted to making my sentences very wordy. For example, Instead of writing "it's" I write "it is" or instead of "don't" I write "do not". One Youtube ad I just saw prompted me to start this thread when it spoke of the inconvenience of making sentences long and wordy by using the word "because" instead of starting a new sentence. I wished I knew that hack when I was in school!

A second thing I'd like to talk about is a technique some authors use to free themselves of writer's block. It's called free falling. It's when you don't know what comes next so you drag out the scene my making excessive details to things like character thoughts, description of the environment etc. I've done this (wrote a couple of unpublished stories), and I feel it helps a little bit with moving forward. Without getting into too much of a discussion on ASOIAF, I think GRRM did a little of this in books 4 and 5 judging from how the plot seems to be slow at times (please don't go too far down that path so this thread is not in the wrong part of the forum). 

Has anyone here ever done either of these? Tell me about how it helped or if you strongly advise against doing one or both of these.

[Karneol]

I never used these technique's:

1. I never had problems with writing long text. The last big essay I wrote was 8 page's long (expected were 5)

2. I'm from Germany and we never had a word quoteat least in German).

But in English we are starting to write short essays too. We are "forced" to use the first thing for idk what reason. Another thing about this English essays is that you start to see who really developed his English. You see people with fifth-grader-English (a phrase we use for other students with a very simple English) struggeling with getting to 150 words. One the other side there are people like me who could write 200 words without any problems because we watch English YT videos for example. I'm trying to get one of the first ones to use the second technique which is hard because of his very limited vocabulary.

[sologdin]

when i taught undergraduates, years ago, i sometimes afflicted them with prompts in the form of quotations and demanded that they comment in any way that they felt was appropriate.  it was a useful exercise for diagnostic essay purposes at the beginning of the semester, and perhaps also for examinations, though in a rhetoric course there shouldn't be many examinations.

the strategies described, supra, for lengthening the word count are extremely unlikely to be effective.  argumentative completeness is generally more important than an arbitrary sum--quality over quantity.

please therefore select one of the following prompts and respond in whatever way you feel is significant.  i will assess your reply and your assessment will be recorded in your permanent board record:

Quote

1 – British dramatist Christopher Marlowe notoriously said “all they who love not tobacco and boys are fools.” 

2 – In his Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, young Karl Marx wrote, famously, “religion is the opium of the people.  The real happiness of the people requires the abolition of religion, which is their illusory happiness.  In demanding that that they give up illusions about their condition, we demand that they give up a condition that requires illusion.”  

3 – Samuel Johnson concluded that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel"; Oscar Wilde adjudged that “Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious"; and Voltaire lamented that “to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”  

4 – In Hocus Pocus, Kurt Vonnegut writes “It is misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm...I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them.”  

5 – Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, writes: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman…Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as autonomous being…And she is simply what man decrees; thus she is called ‘the sex,’ by which is meant that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual being.  For him she is sex—absolute sex, no less.  She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential.  He is Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.”  

 

[Ordos]

On 4/24/2019 at 11:25 PM, sologdin said:

4 – In Hocus Pocus, Kurt Vonnegut writes “It is misleading for people to read about great successes, since even for middle-class and upper-class white people, in my experience, failure is the norm...I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them.”  

 

Well honesty is refreshing. But how to how do you encourage children to pursue careers and dreams through hard work if you simply tell them "You will fail"? My suggestion would be not to give blunt honesty, but a diplomatic honesty with the whole picture in mind. You could say: "You will probably fail" or "You might succeed and you might fail". That is of course in addition to preparing them for failure. Failure you could add might plant seeds of success as it makes one learn from mistakes and either do things different in the future or at least find other paths that lead to success.

---

106 words!

[Tears of Lys]

Is he being evaluated on grammar?  Someone would like to know. 

 

Word quotas are ridiculous.  Rather than thinking about the story or essay, the writer invariably begins with the main goal of quantity.   As the above quotes illustrate, much can be said in a few words.

[Ordos]

Actually that was 104 words...

I wrote a redundant 'how to' before the words 'how do'. I changed my mind on how to phrase the sentence and forgot to delete the previous words. I guess that deducts points for grammar. Oh well.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Ooh I have an idea!

Hunter Thompson said he copied the Great Gatsby on the typewriter in order to get a feel for the rhythm of it.  You could always swap out Fitzgerald for something better, but might be a fun exercise.  

If you do, I think you should also make a video of it and post a link here.