I recently bought a book called “Writing a Novel and Getting Published For Dummies” (that collection of This or That For Dummies). You can laugh, but that thing helps.
Even though many of you may be less inclined to accept a book titled “For Dummies” as a viable source or a book to respect, let me tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong.
Those books have tons of pages and are written by professionals, hardly the kind of book that even a stupid person would ever read.
Also, the language is light and simple. And honestly, after spending a whole day in front of the computer digging up original ideas inside my brain, or spending the whole day at school, or after reading a book that is interesting but whose language is too flowery and makes me lose track in the description many times, the last thing I want to do is study a complicated book on how to write.
There are people who are a bit more snobbish about the kind of language they like to read, and that’s great, I would love to be able to be like that. But since I’m not, I need to read something that follows my train of thought and not a book in which I read the same sentence three times, and still haven’t been able to understand what’s written there because I need to stop and concentrate.
Let me ask you: if you had Dr. Sheldon Cooper teaching you Physics — remember that he will teach you the etymology of the word, and that’s unnecessary to learn physics — or you had a teacher who swallows helium from a balloon and speaks with a high-pitched voice to explain the science behind it, or plays with magnets to show that two poles with the same charge can’t be put together, which one would you choose?
Okay, stupid question. Everyone would choose Sheldon because, well, he’s Sheldon Cooper. But most likely we would all stay much more focused on the subject and understand more about physics with Professor Helium.
Why? Because the simplicity with which he teaches keeps us more interested in what he has to say.
PATRICIA MORAIS
I write bilingual (PT and EN) supernatural fantasy books inspired by mythology and folklore from around the world. But my actual mission is to help other writers write, publish and market their books.
