On Tue, 6 May 1997, Jeremy 'Loki' Blackman wrote:

Think "steampunk" (cyberpunk-like attitudes set during the
Industrial Revolution, but where the Babbage(?) machine (a primitive
computer) actually worked) with magic added.

This is a style I used to write in.  It can be -very- hard to pull off
correctly.

It's difficult.  But you just have to have a good imagination, and an
eye for what I'd call "perspective".  You want to write so that people
understand what you're saying, but on the same hand, you want to create
a mode of speech peculiar to your story in general, and then to your
characters in particular.  It should have its own idioms, cultural
references, etc.  This might be quite an undertaking for people just
getting started in writing (like, um, most of us ;) but the results can
turn out spectacularly above and beyond "ordinary" prose.  I mean
"ordinary" loosely speaking, of course.  A good portion of the writing
that's come across this list is anything but ordinary.  ;)

As to why I'm preaching on "perspective", I wrote a short snippet of a
story called "Spyre" (it was a "working title") which featured a race of
aliens which lived in the outer layers of a gas giant planet.  You might
be able to image the tremendous shift in "perspective" between a purely
human viewpoint and such an alien viewpoint.
That particular piece, I wrote after about thirty hours of no sleep,
when my brain was about as wacked out as it was going to get.  ^_-  And
then I lost it when my disks got stolen.  *sigh*  Didn't have a computer
of my own back then.

And yes, there -are- 'steampunk' novels out there.  A great example (if
I'm not remembering the title incorrectly) is 'In the Country of the
Blind', and I cannot remember the author.  It's about two secret cabals
fighting behind the scenes to control the world, using the Babbage
machines to predict the outcomes of actions and the course of events...

I can't say I've read it, but the best advice for *any* writing of this
calibre is to know the "perspective" of each of the characters
beforehand, and to very intimately know the setting.  Otherwise, people
will see through it, and it'll look patchwork.

Ahem.  *grin*  Now that I'm done rambling, does anyone wanna get started
on this thingamabob?  8)  If someone can come up with a "setting"
(although I have a few ideas for that, too) and a plot line, I can do
the imagery.  :)

Damon Casale, damoo@carmelnet.com
Spam, spam!  WONDERFUL spam!  ^_^