Reddit Reddit reviews L.A. Confidential

We found 2 Reddit comments about L.A. Confidential. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Literature & Fiction
Books
TV, Movie & Game Tie-In Fiction
Genre Literature & Fiction
L.A. Confidential
Warner Books NY
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2 Reddit comments about L.A. Confidential:

u/mushpuppy · 2 pointsr/DestructiveReaders

Not sure how to do some of the fancy formatting I see here. Sorry. I'm going to have to break it into 2. Sorry for that also.

“On the outer circle please, arm’s length from each other.

Big problem with starting any scene with speech is it’s basically noise into empty space; unless it’s clear who the speaker is, you’re wrecking suspension of disbelief because there’s no environment. Might as well be God speaking at the creation of the universe.

Typically it may only take a few words to generate a scene, but you always need to set one first.

The children stopped chattering and obeyed the wiseman’s instructions.

Wiseman seems like a clunky name to me. Generally language evolves to be shorter, not necessarily more precise. And that evolution typically gravitates toward words of common usage. I'd suggest coming up with something simpler.

Additionally, of course, it comes with its own negative and disruptive connotation, as it's far too similar to "wise guy". Which takes a reader right out of your story.

Also, I can't imagine that children would stop chattering and then obey. Children chatter as they do anything. Plus, obeying the wiseman's instructions doesn't create any image whatsoever. Focus more on what they're doing as they obey.

Create a scene! Don't tell us about the scene.

With some elbowing about who got to sit where, the five kids took their places on the dark blue circle painted onto the hardwood floor.

Far too wordy. Unless you're doing it specifically for effect--and that should be rare--actions never should seem to take longer to read than they do to occur. Problem is you're overwriting and not trusting your creation of a scene. Additionally, unless it matters how many children are present, don't be so specific; for one thing, five kids sitting on a circle wouldn't create that much chaos; for another, specifying five disrupts a reader's creation of the image. Again, unless it matters, don't number things.

Further, kids is colloquial to the point of meaninglessness. Either call them by name or role in the story or something. While I suggest not being specific with numbers, here you should be more specific.

Knowing when to provide detail and which type and knowing when to omit lies at the heart of writing.

Wiseman Tybalt hauled his tired body to the blackboard

No he didn't. Not unless he had a wheelbarrow or similar device. Be precise! Say what you really mean! He forced himself to get off his chair/rise from his rock/put down his lesson planner, or whatever. He could have pushed himself to the blackboard, I suppose. And depending on your verb choice, you don't need to say he's tired. The verb should communicate that.

A great rule of thumb is to substitute verbs for adjectives whenever possible. That's a fundamental way to punch up prose, and any copy editor worth her salary knows this. Beginning writers tend not to.

took a piece of chalk, and wrote in big capital letters.

You don't need to say he wrote in chalk. We know that's what he used. When you over-describe you make it harder for your reader to make the leaps you need him to make, to join with you in the story.

He pushed himself to the blackboard and wrote in big letters DON’T THINK OF ELEPHANTS.

You see? You've shown that he was tired, shown that he used chalk, and shown that he wrote in capitals. And you've done it in far fewer words.

He shuffled back to the group with his thin wooden cane, and took his usual place in the middle.

Again, you're over-writing and saying a lot of things we already know. And did he really shuffle--i.e., does it matter that he did? Or did he simply step over the children? And do you even need to say that he did this?

He pushed himself to the blackboard, wrote in big letters DON’T THINK OF ELEPHANTS, then returned to the middle of the circle, propped his cane against his knee, and sat.

I'm not saying you have to write the way I write. But brevity matters. Every word matters. This may be the hardest thing for beginning writers to understand. Every word matters. And they don't matter in the sense that they're yours, you've written them, so they matter. They matter in the way that whether it's your name at the end of I love you matters. Details matter. Because you want to provide them sparingly. So your reader can create the world in her head.

See, as a writer you don't create the world on the page. You suggest the world. If you've done it right, your reader creates it. Two great examples of writers who understood this: Raymond Carver and James Ellroy. Neither Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? or L.A. Confidential has a wasted word in it.