I've just spent a few minutes re-reading selected parts of that essay, and I'm sorry to say that it's as timely as ever -- even, in this age of epic fantasy, more timely than ever. Anyone who is committing fiction should keep a copy of Twain's rules posted up next to the writing-desk, and glance at them regularly. They won't tell you what to write, and they won't give you grammar tips, but they'll give you better advice about what not to do than a year's subscription to Writer's Digest and three weekend seminars.
I've been reading a lot of fantasy for WFA over the past few weeks, and far too many of them fail to respect the simple requirements:
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere....2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it....
3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others....
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there....
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say....
If that last one was honored even half of the time, I would be so much happier.
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