slaves, tell me about 50 Shades of Grey

Just whistle thru your teeth and spit

"Touch of Grey" could be the prequel

The 50 shades of grey album would be a mashup of to the extreme and the kids of widney high

People are assuming a movie will be made because the books made a gajillion dollars and Universal bought the film rights.

...for at least a few million.

the author and agent got the prestige track record of James Schamus’ Focus Features, backed by the guaranteed passion of Langley, who chased this one hard.

Ang Lee, maybe?

I have an idea for a film. It’s about an innocent creative executive who is drawn into the dangerous and erotic world of slash fiction writing after he boss assigns her to comb through Twilight fan faction sites looking for an idea he can rip off.

Comment by Michael — Monday March 26, 2012 @ 12:07pm EDT Reply to this post

haha "chance"

The author and agent did a similar thing when they set Fifty Shades of Grey up with a publisher. They chose Random House because they wanted the backing and bucks of a big publishing house with a Vintage imprint that gives the trilogy the chance to be regarded as literature and not some trashy sex novel.

People are assuming a movie will be made because the books made a gajillion dollars and Universal bought the film rights.

...for at least a few million.

― Odd Spice (Eazy), Thursday, May 31, 2012 12:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

the $4 million or whatever film option fee has to be a relatively small fraction of the grosses from 10+ million in book sales

i thought the $4m option only gets paid out if the film gets green lighted? idk

The whole time this thread's been around I've been reading the title in the voice of Toby from the American Splendor movie. "SHLAAAVES, tell me about FIFB-TY SHADES of GREY."

"You can't have any of my White-castle Ham-burgers, SHLAAAVES"

50 worst synonyms in 50 Shades of Grey

I like my women sentient and receptive

well who doesn't, really

looool @ sentient

More words bad!

can we talk for a second about enervating energy tho

most of those are fine

even "sentient and receptive" fits better with the clinical dryness of the rest of the line than the suggested replacement augh what the fuck am i doing

I'm still stuck on decadent hair. xxp

oh man, thesaurus abuse is one of my favorite things to spot!

these are such classics.

endeavoring to quell my nerves made me lol

The offense: “My subconscious nods sagely, a you’ve-finally-worked-it-out-stupid look on her face.”

The fix: Stop personifying your subconscious.

this is the best, fuiud

shoulda stopped at 20 worst and only put the really bad ones

Yeah a lot of those "corrections" sound worse than the originals, at least out of context.

Yes, some of this seems a bit nitpicky. It's not like this is Iowa writer's workshop.

“For the first time in my life, I voluntarily go for a run … I need to expend some of this excess, enervating energy.”

I dare anyone to defend this

"all this energy, it's so TIRING; I'd better go running"

I don't get that article. In the first ten examples, there's only one that I can see that is problematic, and that's the use of tautology. The rest, well, they're just words. And relatively common words at that. Making the words simpler/more Germanic/less Romantic (in the linguistic sense, obv) don't change whether the writing is good at all.

*doesn't change, sorry.

yeah, there are a couple lelegit offenses in there, especially the words with nearly duplicate meanings, but most of the words highlighted in that article are acceptable choices. Looks like Patti shot at the broad side of a barn and missed.

16-17.

The offense: “He sits down beside me and buckles himself into his seat, then begins a protracted procedure of checking gauges and flipping switches and buttons from the mind-boggling array of dials and lights and switches in front of me.”

The fix: “He sits down beside me and buckles himself into his seat, then begins a dragged-out process of checking gauges and flipping switches and buttons from the mind-boggling array of dials and lights and switches in front of me.”

Yeah, no. If anything, you want "drawn-out process," but there's nothing wrong with "protracted."

"Dragged-out process?" Really?

“My heart is in my mouth as I reread his epistle and I huddle in the spare bed practically hugging my Mac.”

I would like to see a defense of this, too

Yeah, I'm scrolling down some more and I think I might hate whoever wrote this article more than James herself. FFS, do you REALLY think that people won't understand the word "immaterial"? Or "imploring"? What the hell is wrong with you? Yes, cut tautology and cliche, that's fine, but essentially what they're suggesting is that these words are alien and pretentious, when they're perfectly fucking serviceable words with real meanings.

The offense: “He hits me again, and the pain pulses and echoes along the line of the belt. Holy shit … that smarts.”

The fix: “He hits me again, and the pain pulses and echoes along the line of the belt. Holy shit … that hurts.”

emil.y -- you make an interesting point! that's why i think at least 30 of those are a matter of personal preference rather than straight thesaurus abuse.

there's an added wrinkle:
i have noticed that there's also a general tendency among (young?) writers to regard flowery language as pretentious and "simple" language preferred as a way to communicate down-to-earthness. using "look" as a transitional word to change the subject of the next paragraph, preferring phrasal verbs to precise verbs, using conversational language to communicate accessibility while discussing something that is possibly considered at least somewhat highfalutin, like politics or w/e.

that's another topic though.

IMO, what the author of this article is suggesting is that these words are being used to bring a veneer of sophistication to some stupid bullshit

The offense: Fifty Shades of Grey
The fix: Don't Read It

flowery -- in other words, vocabulary-strong (versus vocabulary-weak, using a phrase where a word will do, etc)
these are not formal terms, i'm just trying to speak descriptively

what i mean is that it's a sociolinguistic piece rather than a word police piece

“My heart is in my mouth as I reread his epistle and I huddle in the spare bed practically hugging my Mac.”

The problem with this is not 'epistle' in itself. It's that "my heart is in my mouth" is a down-home cliche, followed up with the archaic term (which while relatively accepting referring to a letter hasn't really transferred to use re: email, so the 'Mac' thing is problematic for that reason), there are too many active clauses that don't really work in a single sentence (heart in mouth, rereading, huddling, hugging), over-specificity re: Mac...

The offense: “He hits me again, and the pain pulses and echoes along the line of the belt. Holy shit … that smarts.”

The fix: “He hits me again, and the pain pulses and echoes along the line of the belt. Holy shit jeez … that hurts.”

exactly -- structurally (syntactically) and even pragmatically the sentence is +/- ok
it's the precise combination of everything that leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths, which is a matter of style and sociolinguistic implications as much as word abuse

which is interesting!

My heart is in my mouth. It's chewy and tastes of offal. I feel faint.

i once worked with a freelancer at a weekly paper, and one day her piece came in and contained the phrase, "... those Broadway shows you know and ardor."
it was doubly in need of changing because

(1) ardor is a noun, and you were clearly looking for a substitute verb for "love" only she looked under the nominal definition carelessly and
(2) you can't replace one word in a cliche and expect it to sound good. it will not sound good, it will sound double bad

so it was a complicated problem, more than just word police OR my personal style preference

you = she in (1) oops pardon my bad editing there

I blame the current state of creative writing curricula, and how teachers in general have learned to coach students on writing.

Show, don't tell. Use no adjectives. Use only plain language. Frustrated MFA grads have complained that they were still having this advise pounded into their heads late in their programs.

These are useful maxims for beginners. They reign in a lot of bad writing, but they are over-taught and they are not the end-all and be-all of rhetoric and style.

Exactly -- that's what I mean, it's a part of language that comes and goes with the tides and most people aren't aware that their tide isn't the only one

i always find the anti-adjective campaign weird (there's one now!). it's adverbs that need to be stamped out most of the time.

Also, as is made clear in the article above, some people have extreme ideas of what counts as flowery.

it's the precise combination of everything that leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths, which is a matter of style and sociolinguistic implications as much as word abuse

I just read a whole book on this topic:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517Mbej3AuL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

that's another lesson that people were taught, and comes and goes with the tides. there is nothing wrong with adverbs if you are not overusing them, or using them as sloppy shorthand for something else. re: "modifier phobia" http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3453