I use the word whilst. Take that how you will.

Personally I both whilst and while the same way I use amidst and amongst. If a sentence flows over the mind's tongue more easily using one than the other, I'll go for which ever forms a nicer sounding sentence.

This is the grace of the English language c:

 

Oh, I didn't even know about the grade level feature either, so I tried out two random chapters. The first had a reading ease of 82.3 and a reading level of 4.7. The chapter I'm about to post up had a reading ease of 75.8 and the grade level of 5.8.

I believe that newspapers are written with fifth-grade reading level in mind, so I'm happy about that. I wonder how much the Harry Potter vocabulary effects the score.

I think it's a fairly nifty feature, and I am forever grateful that none of my teacher's had picked up on it in the past. That would have really sucked.

 

Because this thread is dumb enough to get my attention:

Situation #1:

Copying and Pasting Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban into a word document and leaving it as it stands, mangled with word processor believing each sentence randomly ends and that the first letter of every line needs to be capitalized produces:

Example 1 (56KB)

Stats:

70.2 Reading Ease
4.9 Grade Level​

Taking time to correct all those issues and putting it into a format that will be accepted by Fanfiction.net or in a fashion you can actually read without going stir crazy produces:

Example #2 (59KB)

Stats:

61.0 Reading Ease
10.5 Grade Level​

Right.

For further proof, I just randomly picked out a notes document for a story I've written, unedited, and just let it sit; this is with random lines that don't end and words all over the place for suggestions as to how to proceed with the story. I got this:

Example #3 (67KB)

Stats:

69.3 Reading Ease
7.0 Grade Level​

I then parsed the first chapter into a separate word document, corrected and extracted all notes until the document was coherent and got:

Example #4 (50KB)

Stats:

68.0 Reading Ease
7.4 Grade level​

The reading ease went down after I removed random uncapitalized words, run-on sentences stuck in between paragraphs (shouting to remove this shit and blah blah blah).

The tool is flawed and pointless; the first example is enough to show that it's irrelevant for anything more than a pissing contest.

And to address the main point of this thread, which is the idea that anyone can set laws or pinpoint how a story will be based on usage of diction, verbosity, buzz words or how well defined something is. It's pretentious. It's one thing to give something a grade based on how incoherent it is; it's another thing to think Stink and White's Guide to Whatever will help you pinpoint whether the story is fluid or fun to read.

Lord of the Rings is fun to read - save the Wheel of Time, there is no more pretentious a book (diction-wise) that is this popular. Harry Potter is enjoyable and as a Welsh friend once put it, reading one is like taking a nice, easy shit. It flows well.

I don't enjoy nuhuh's stories, which are largely well constructed. I do enjoy Vash's stories which often times read like someone blind wrote it at places. The Seven Sins of HP is terribly written but oddly enjoyable. I like Le Rob's work and if this guy cut out every unnecessary word, the story would be five sentences long.

Amerison is another example, as we both enjoy description and long-winded passages discussing the angle and trajectory of the urine being unleashed on an unsuspecting passerby. Oddly enough, I like Amerison's work and I'm sure he has a few words in there that are unnecessary.

Totally impossible discussion to have. There are no rules to writing. From Jude to Obscure to the stream of conscience writing that is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - from every "I did, he did, I walked, she talked" novel that is mind-numbingly, soul-crushing boring that has been written by Hemingway to the Ayn Rand bricks that had every 17-19 year old male feeling empowered around late HS/early college.

It's just bullshit.

 

You can pretty much judge a story with whilst. It is unique because everyone knows it, so if it is used, everyone else knows it was consciously chosen over while.

It is too transparent, so most writers avoid it.

I liken this to dialogue tags. Replacing ’said’ with something else, like ’maintained’, or ejaculated’ just tips the reader off.

Same with whilst.

 

Unless of course the reason for using it is in a setting where pompousness is to be conveyed:

Or maybe Lucius would use it in dialogue. Never mind that Rowling used ejaculated I'm pretty sure. Thought it fit since Ron was ready to take in every glorious inch of Harry's broom.

 

Damn, JKR used it. -_-

I know now the reasoning behind the stuff I initially posted. The fanfiction writer sees something published authors do and emulate them without understanding why.

Someone can’t write something bland, then stick whilst or some exotic other word in there and tout it as a shield, like that Warpwizard guy did with exformational in that other thread. That was my primary issue.

The rain symbolizes change/cleansing or sets the mood (for dystopian fiction for example), but a lot of fics with it falling in the opening scene do neither.

 

Yup 'ejaculated' is one hellova tip off, yes siree.

-giggles-

-goes somewhere to grow up-

 

It doesn't make it alright or anything - IMO, GoF was decent and every story after was retarded, too long and lost the whole feeling that made you wish you were actually inside the castle rather than wanting to bludgeon all the characters to death.

If you think about it, Harry stabbed the diary on like the 250th page of Chamber of Secrets. In OOTP, you were what... almost ready to go to Hogwarts and whining about a prefect badge? Nonetheless, Rowling's writing style is commendable much in the same way Dan Brown's is to be commended. Word says it's a 6.0 or 10.5 (whatever) but what it is is very fluid writing.

Now, the content made it irrelevant... same as Angels & Demons (decent) and the Da Vinci Code (retarded). If you're disembrained and you just place H/F in the summary, there's a better chance of your story being enjoyed than lets say it had H/Hr. Both shitty but the content is interesting.

I dunno what this forum was going through in its early days but I ran across a story in the library where H/Hr practice celibacy and almost give into fucking one another when Jesus Christ actually speaks to them through a ring and beseeches them to not give into... sins of the flesh? Yeah. Lemme dig that up....

And no surprise IP82 got this one into the library.

Yeah. So I don't know. All I know is... absolutely nothing after reading that again.

First page is always the hardest IMO, followed by transition from exposition to dialogue and back. I was of the impression that the sun was always out over the mundane, perfectly manicured lawn of No. 4 Privet Drive. Maybe it's because if I see the word Dursley, I just scroll down until we get to the point.

 

Actually, there is a distinction and an interesting history to go behind it.

The word while is an adverbial genitive. This means it is a noun used to describe verbs.

But while is a verb, you say? Now it is, but it wasn't always!

Consider the noun form of the word while.

The definition here is time. It is worth his time.

During this period where while was only a noun, an enterprising person around 1375 AD took the word and gave it an Adverbial genitive - a variation of the noun that gave it the power to act as an adverb.

As such, whilst was born. While was only a noun that generally described 'time', and whilst took the meaning of today's verb while - 'at the same time', or 'although'.

Except language changes happen over time, and as Middle English rapidly lost the Genitive case (the case that marked nouns as modifying or possessing other nouns - all that remains is the 's ending today) and evolved into Modern English, whilst was left without any real reason to exist.

Whilst only existed because of the Genitive tense, and with it gone, while quickly acquired its meaning and gained a verb form in 1606 AD. But just because whilst had no reason to exist didn't mean it fell out of the usage. People have always kept a certain affinity for older, more archaic words, and it is in these populations that it survives.

British speakers tend to regularly use whilst in academic and professional writing to lend a polish credibility to their work, while Americans seem to forgo it by and large. This may be due to the fact that Americans received the majority of their British immigrants after while gained a verb form and replaced whilst.

A quick lesson in usage, as there is a difference, although it is one that an exception has been made for in modern language:

In the most technical sense, you would use:

You wouldn't use it here:

While would be used instead because of the presence of two verbs before the comma.

It's a moot point anyway - it's been long accepted that whilst can be used in place of while in any situation. The above rules of usage are extremely technical and archaic.

 

Perfect example. In the summaries with whilst in them - pompousness had no place in most of them - replacing whilst with while would have made the vast majority even worse or less appealing, mirroring H/F and H/Hr.

I have no problem with someone competent using an exotic word, but everything else has to be there. Makeup can make a pretty girl beautiful, but not an ugly one pretty, in the paraphrased words of Oscar Wilde.

Otherwise, it is pushed beyond transparency and into contrivance. Someone has a wreck of a writing style, and they go back and switch in a few bland words for fancier ones. That doesn't change the sentence structure in which those words appear for the same reason using exformational in a brainless review doesn't make it sophisticated.

 

Yeah, I was thinking that too.

Edit: I think women have more talent in terms of coherence and fluidity (also, they appear to be the only ones capable of drawing fanart that doesn't suck). Unfortunately, they write slash. Of the numerous slash stories I've read for the purpose of laughing, I'm always surprised by how the story is usually quite well constructed. The content is beyond fucking retarded and so I always end up stopping at the first 'Draykee-poo'. It's the same with Severitus stories.

Chicks write better overall. Independent stories are always written by teenage boys with a hard-on (because the story often spirals into a harem story/multi-partner story). They almost always are littered with random stops, words like flashback capitalized in between paragraphs and some even go so far as to just put the word 'break' right there in bold. I'm probably going to read the latter before the former though and this forum's bread and butter for two years was that format of writing.

 

Asshole.

Welcome back. You know I bitchslapped you all with that post though.

 

Another thing is that authors take symbolism too seriously in the worst way. Particularly the stories where Harry goes to new schools, and they seal the deal by changing his name to something else.

Take this for example:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/23234109/1/SheddingIdentity

That spell fucking legally changes the recipient's name to Gordon. Harry casts it on himself, and then the author goes into extreme panoramic detail going through showing the paperwork miraculously changing to reflect that. The headings with Harry Potter over the animated pictures in the Ministry change in mid-flash.

There is some collective conscience that governs paper, which is prompted by the spell to change every occurrence of Harry Potter in every single book and issue of the Daily Prophet to Gordon Potter.

Now, not only is this insane, but it defies the whole point of Harry changing his name in the first place because everyone knows his new name. That means there is no God damn point in changing the name except for the symbolism.

And its history, a magical viking got named Gordon, and then got ridiculed by his compatriots, so he renamed a few of them to shut them up.

 

Don't see the story. Gordon's a pretty terrible name however. Should be Sylvester or Aardvark.

 

I'm not sure if you were trying to spare my feelings (highly doubtful, given where we're posting) or just didn't want to subject anyone to reading the full text of my post, but that last example of "stilted, lofty dialogue" was posted by me; that's my overly wordy work there, as posted here a while back.

Yes, it's wordy and could really be pared way down, but I stand by the character's overall tone and wordiness. He is a politician and a scholar, not unlike Dumbledore, and those types of people tend to like the sound of their own voices a bit more than is healthy. My mistake wasn't in his way of speaking, but in letting him go on so long that the scene was just too big and drawn out.

Anyway, that story is back in the editing phase.

 

I just grabbed it at random, and took it out of context to suit the point. That was the most memorable example, take that how you will. There are fics where everyone speaks like that, and I know they won't in yours.

Just for good measure, I will quote one of my really bad moments:

Awkward as hell with a witticism falling flat.

My thought for your story was that it suited the character, the only reason it was a problem was that the dialogue was most of what you posted, so it pretty much defined the atmosphere.

Had the first chapter been longer and shown other characters speaking differently, it would have been absolutely clear it was a quirk of the character, not of your writing.

 

Thanks for the heads up.

Your story does show a lot of the typical problems though. Andro covered them above.

 

I just checked out the list of all the fanfics that use the word "whilst." I really hate that word now. While is much better.

 

Good for you.

And lol at the necro.