{"id":558,"date":"2010-05-04T22:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-04T22:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/2010\/05\/04\/good-writing-is-timeless\/"},"modified":"2015-11-30T15:33:11","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T22:33:11","slug":"good-writing-is-timeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/good-writing-is-timeless\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Writing is Timeless"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_MH1TyPzYdwU\/S-CYxsalVMI\/AAAAAAAAAo4\/-bJa9avEv0Y\/s1600\/silent+film.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/silent-film.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Recently I stumbled upon <i>How To Write for Moving Pictures: A Manual Of Instruction and Information<\/i>, by Marguerite Bertsch, copyright 1917.&nbsp; In skimming through the book I noticed that much of the writing advice applied not only to the silent films of the time period, but to any sort of writing in any era.&nbsp; This is one of my favorite passages:<\/p>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\"><i>What is  common to all audiences will be found to lie very close to those  principles and ideals which actuate a people in the affairs of everyday  life.<\/i><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\"><i>Regardless of those  successes that have had their day through a risque element which the  author and producer handled with a delicacy that brought it just this  side of the offensive, there is perhaps no factor in the public mind  which can be so banked upon as its response to what is pure and  elevating. Realising that the human soul is so constructed that goodness  attracts it like a magnet while evil repels, and that those individuals  in whom this is not true are classed by all others as abnormal, we have  the basis of the first great requirement,\u2014a wholesome atmosphere.<\/i><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\" style=\"text-indent: 1em;\"><i>By this  we do not mean that the audience prefers to be fed upon a milk and sugar  diet, and that it has not a deep and abiding interest in all those  phases of life which it knows to exist, whether of good or evil. On the  contrary, the darker side of life, the mistakes, the soul upheavals, present a light  and shade to an audience that is fraught with the keenest dramatic  interest. It is only in the manner in which he handles such a theme that  an author can offend. So long as the author&#8217;s point of view regarding  his subject coincides with that of the audience, his work will be a  serious, wholesome exposition of life&#8217;s facts, be they dark or light.  Too often, however, an author gets the notion that an audience&#8217;s  clamouring after knowledge is a hankering after vice. Working under this  misguided judgment, he presents vice to the audience, loving it; crime,  excusing it, and the dark, unpleasant side of life, bringing out no  larger truths to justify its introduction.<\/i><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\"><i>Nothing is more quickly  detected, nor more keenly resented by an audience than such an attempt  to set at defiance those principles on which their beings are founded,  and in opposition to which there is no life.<\/i><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"gtxt_body\" style=\"font-size: 108%;\">This still rings true for me.&nbsp; Bravo Marguerite Bertsch! <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I stumbled upon How To Write for Moving Pictures: A Manual Of Instruction and Information, by Marguerite Bertsch, copyright 1917.&nbsp; In skimming through the book I noticed that much of the writing advice applied not only to the silent films of the time period, but to any sort of writing in any era.&nbsp; This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[504],"tags":[196],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editing-writing-advice","tag-white-roses-in-bloom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pelicanbookgroup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}