Literary theory book outline

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sunandshadow

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Hi all! :) I have over the years written several blogs and essaies, and part of a thesis, talking about literary theory from a structuralist perspective. The other day I decided to organize it all into some coherent form, like a small book (it's only about 15k words). But I'm having trouble deciding what would be the best order to put all the info in. Do any of you know of an online or usenet group where literary theorists hang out, where I could post my outline and get some feedback on it? If I post it here, will anyone know enough about the subject to be able to make suggestions?
 

jenngreenleaf

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I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're talking about, but there's a discussion board on this site that might be of some use . . . or another place to ask for direction . . .
 

sunandshadow

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That was interesting. Actually the thing that was most interesting about it was how the writer managed to go from Aristotle to Post-modernism completely skipping structuralism, which is normally considered to be part of modernism and would logically go in between aristotle and postmodernism. I looked at the boards there, but the way the forums are named it seems like everything which isn't somehow related to Ayn Rand is off topic. Maybe I'll email the guy who wrote that article though.
 

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sunandshadow said:
That was interesting. Actually the thing that was most interesting about it was how the writer managed to go from Aristotle to Post-modernism completely skipping structuralism, which is normally considered to be part of modernism and would logically go in between aristotle and postmodernism. I looked at the boards there, but the way the forums are named it seems like everything which isn't somehow related to Ayn Rand is off topic. Maybe I'll email the guy who wrote that article though.

I hope he can give you the direction you need! :) Good luck and, if you find a forum, maybe you could post a link in this thread for others. :)
 

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I think your best bet is to search university English departments and find a listserv that focuses on structural theory. Have you tried contacting your local university about this?
 

sunandshadow

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Nomad said:
I think your best bet is to search university English departments and find a listserv that focuses on structural theory. Have you tried contacting your local university about this?

Ooh good idea. I just sent an email to CMU, we'll see if that gets any results. :)
 

sunandshadow

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jennhollowell said:
I hope he can give you the direction you need! :) Good luck and, if you find a forum, maybe you could post a link in this thread for others. :)

Actually there was no email for that guy listed with his articles. :( But certainly, if I find a good forum I can post a link here.
 

sunandshadow

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Things are working out pretty well with this, just in case anyone's curious. I realized that since I want my book to be a how-to-write book which introduces structuralism to writers who haven't studied it before, I don't really need feedback from structural literary theorists, just writers who read how-to-write books, which are much easier to come by. ;) I spent about 3 hours yesterday hacking my manuscript into shape, and it looks like my rough draft may be ready for constructive criticism in a week or two. :)

The only problem is that the manuscript is not very long - only 27k words, which could conceivably grow to 30k as I finish incorporating the last few bits but seems unlikely to get bigger than that. I wonder if that will be a barrier to getting it published?
 

jenngreenleaf

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That's great news! Thank you for the update.

Yes, that's a small book . . . I worked with an agent, briefly, about a book idea I had that was roughly the same size. He mentioned how difficult it was to get books like that -- without enough meat -- in the marketplace.

I'm sure others will weigh in on this.

Have you thought about adding quotes, prompts, activities, suggested reading (and/or sites), check lists and things like that to beef up each chapter and give the reader some instant gratification?
 

sunandshadow

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I don't really know how the copyright issue of including quotes from other books works. But yeah I was trying to think what else I could add. Exercises are a possibility buy kind of tricky because I'm talking about fiction in general, not just novels but also computer games, plays, and myths.

I'd like to write a guide to different kinds of magic systems since I've seen people ask for one of those and not be able to find any, but that seems pretty irrelevant to the book's other content...? And I want to have some illustrations/diagrams, those won't increase the word count but would increase the page count.
 

jenngreenleaf

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Sorry --- I didn't meant to be vague. :) I didn't mean quotes from other books, I meant quotes from experts that would be relevant to the material being presented. And, as far as quotes from other books go, I'm pretty sure you just have to include credits at the end.
 

sunandshadow

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You know, I thought about this but I'm really not sure who would be the experts to quote. Other people who have written how-to-write books? People who have written bestsellers? It's not like there are any really famous structural literary theorists - I know the names of a few but your average writer wouldn't recognize any of them.

At any rate, just as a little progress update I wrote the first half of my introduction today, and I know what I'm going to write for the second half. :)
 
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