The resurrected art of bad writing?

archisgore — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:00:38 +0000

I recently took to reading some classics again – after a few year hiatus. The first book on my list was “King Solomon’s Mines”. As I read, I appreciated the high quality of bad writing. It’s ingenious. The book is a first-person narration by Allan Quartermain, and as he describes himself as a humble hunter and trader, it would make so much sense that he would write that way. Took be about half the book to realize that. Sure the auther could have been eloquent to show off his own ego, but that would have ruined the book. The writer could have been just a terrible writer, but then the book would have been horrible, yet it’s not! This was the work of a genius.

I don’t have much to say here beyond getting opinions and thoughts. This was quite an interesting read. The only other book with such a curiously unique writing style was Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s a book of first-person narrations through letters. The book is also brilliant in being thrilling, encapsulating and mesmerizing, given the limitations the author imposes upon himself then he restricts all narration to letters written between certain people. The letters need to portray different personalities through words alone. Situations such as fear, anger, emotional states of characters, need to be represented through their (the character’s writings). It seems to be we rarely give credit to the magnificient art of simply writing itself!

In case you have any books where you’ve seen such an uncommon writing style, I would love to hear from you.

On an ending note, it just hit me – I’ve been reading reviews about twilight lately and they’re all but inspiring. Maybe those critics aren’t appreciating the good writing here? This “Bella” person seems to be as much a mentally degenerate person in need of institutionalization as anyone could ever be. And the book (according to reviews), is written from her point of view. Maybe you’re not appreciating the writer’s genius here. Wouldn’t it seem wierd if Bella were narrating a well-thought-out, logical story without describing Edward’s body a million times? Twilight may just be the resurrection of the art of bad writing! (There’s no way in hell I’m reading one of those books though)

Posted in 1 Tagged: allan quartermain, art, books, dracula, king solomon's mines, literature, portrayal, writing

Handwriting fonts with slight randomization

archisgore — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:24:00 +0000

I’m working in a paper-aging process to create an authentic 18-century looking library at my office cube (but more on that in a later post). And I realised a major snag I hit. Out of all the fonts I searched – no matter how realistic they look like handwritten text, they still render two characters identically.

I’ve always heard how the TTF spec has a full fledged turing-complete language in it. I’m waiting to be impressed. I’m looking for a font (again, a college project I am willing to fund), that will contain metadata on standard deviance or allowable variance on each gylph on each character. What I want is a realistic-looking handwriting font with “mistakes” in it.

Anyone aware of such a font? Anyone think this is an interesting thing worth doing? Unfortunately for me, the one thing I dont have is time. Fortunately for me, I don’t mind going through some expense if this needs to be custom-developed.

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The resurrected art of bad writing?

Handwriting fonts with slight randomization