A guide for fiction reviewing

[drwex]

Also, proof that you pretty much can find anything on the Web these days. I present to you The Turkey City Lexicon.

It was originally intended for use in the Turkey City (SF) fiction writing workshops in the 80s (mostly in Austin, TX) to save us time describing what we found wrong with various submitted stories. But I've held onto many of its concise phrases over the years. "Idiot Plot" is my favorite.

I have also held onto two mimeographed print copies of the Lexicon from back in those days because I was convinced it was gone forever. Silly me. If you type "turkey city" into the google search bar, "...lexicon" is the first completion offered.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I do believe that entire lexicon has been subsumed into TVTropes.org . . .

[dpolicar]

I like White Room. I'm very prone to this fault. Amnesiac Narrator is the ultimate White Room failure.

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thanks for the link.
I always called "Idiot Plot" by "Michael Crichton Disease."
I'm glad that I didn't recognize too many from my own fiction.

[srl.livejournal.com]

I think "squid on the mantelpiece" might be part of the problem with the dissertation chapter I'm writing now (on tabulating machines in early 20th-century public health offices). Will have to ponder more, but it resonates oddly well.

[c1.livejournal.com]

Calling a rabbit a "smeerp" was something Douglas Adams did in his later books that distressed me to no end. I thought the entire bit of The Sandwich Maker could have been much better-- approaching that of the Poet Llafa (and The Songs of the Long Land) were it not for that stupidity. Not so much the name of the Perfectly Normal Beast, because that brought its own self-descriptive narrative, but the damn condiments he put on the sandwiches. Oy!

But at least now, I have a name for it.
And Dennis Hopper Syndrome. It worked brilliantly in Apocalypse Now (mainly because the underlying mystery was as cocked as his rant), but never again after that.

I also thought it interesting that even when you've typed "Turkey Cit" into Google, it's already showing the lexicon as the second choice.