DargonZine
Volume 15, Number 6 |
Distributed: 8/11/2002
Circulation: 666 |
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DargonZine is the publication vehicle of the
Dargon Project, a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the
Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the
project. Please address all correspondence to
<dargon@dargonzine.org>
or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at
ftp://users.primushost.com/members/d/a/dargon/.
Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup
rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 15-6, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright August, 2002
by the Dargon Project. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@rcn.com>,
Assistant Editor: Jon Evans
<godling@covad.net>.
All rights reserved. All rights are reassigned to the individual
contributors. Stories and artwork appearing herein may not be reproduced
or redistributed without the explicit permission of their creators, except
in the case of freely reproducing entire issues for further distribution.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
|
Editorial
f you've been with us for a while, you might know that Dargon
stories go through quite a lot before they ever see print. In the best
case, getting a story from a writer's head to your screen might take six
months, but sometimes stories aren't printed until one or two years
after the writer first lays fingers to keyboard.
In most of these cases, this delay is primarily due to our
peer-review process. Once a writer has finished the first draft of a
story and proofed it himself, he must post it to our discussion list and
give every other Dargon Project writer the opportunity to critique it.
After giving people a fair chance to review the story, the author then
takes the comments he has received and revises the story to improve it.
When done, the author posts it to the list again for more comments; this
process of posting, peer-review, and revision goes on until both the
author and the majority of our writers are satisfied that the story is
"ready to print". Sometimes a story might take just three drafts to get
there, and sometimes it can take six or seven.
If you didn't think about it too much, you might assume that
"peer-review" is just another word for proofreading, which is focused on
pointing out spelling and grammatical errors. I'd like to take a second
to give you a broader idea of what peer-review is, and why we spend so
much time on it.
Peer-review, of course, does indeed incorporate proofreading. It's
extremely important for writers to be proficient in the language, not
just to appear polished and professional, but also to ensure that he or
she is accurately communicating his or her ideas to the reader. Writing
is essentially a very rough form of telepathy, and a writer who isn't
concerned with grammar is someone who doesn't care how well he
communicates with his readers.
Although these types of corrections are a steady percentage of the
comments people receive in their peer-reviews, we actually try very hard
to minimize them. Before any story draft is posted to the list, we
require that authors run a spellcheck on it, and also run it past a
proofreader of their own, who isn't on the list. Catching obvious
spelling and grammar errors reduces the amount of time and space that
peer-reviewers need to devote to grammatical corrections, which frees
them up to talk about more important things. After all, you don't need
another writer to point these out, when a word processor, a writing
book, and any competent proofreader will suffice.
On the other hand, some literary elements require human expertise
and judgment to critique. A good peer-review also considers stylistic
techniques like word choice, exposition, point of view, and scene
selection, which form the body of a story. These are frequent topics of
conversation among our writers, as we share with one another what has
worked for us.
But remember that good writing isn't solely a question of how
effectively a writer can transmit ideas from his or her head to yours
through the medium of the written word. That is, of course, a critical
execution skill that aspiring writers must master, but good writing
isn't just the medium; it's also the message. Unless we also examine the
story ideas themselves, we are only looking at half of what writing is
about. How then do we improve the very ideas behind the stories a writer
wishes to tell?
Well, just like anything else, DargonZine exposes it to peer-review
and critique, encouraging our writers to share their beliefs about what
makes stories interesting and moving. DargonZine's goal isn't to just
grow people who can successfully communicate in writing, but to develop
true artists. It takes a wealth of experience, combined with insight,
intuition, and lots of practice to become a masterful "thinker of
stories", and I feel that DargonZine comes closest to achieving our
potential when our writers conduct discussions at this level.
The peer-review process can be lengthy and arduous for our writers,
both those doing critiques as well as those receiving them. But when our
critiques go beyond simple execution issues like grammar and spelling,
it frees us to talk about our ideas and explore the artistic side of
writing fiction. When this happens, the peer-review process becomes the
crucible where DargonZine fulfils its promise of helping aspiring
writers really improve their craft. That's why we think it's appropriate
to put so much time and energy into our peer-reviews.
In case you haven't noticed, we really are back. After a little
lapse back in June, this will be the third issue we've put out in just
six weeks. And even better news is that our next issue, DargonZine 15-7,
is already partially put-together. You should expect to receive it on
September 1. It'll be a great issue, finishing up P. Atchley's "Malice"
series that continues in this issue, and also beginning a new chapter in
Dafydd's imposing "Talisman" series.
Accompanying "Malice" in this issue, though, is the second and
concluding half of Nick Wansbutter's "A Matter of Pride". You have both
these writers to thank for most of our stories this summer, and they've
done a wonderful job getting them finished and into print when the
magazine needed them. I hope you enjoy the results of their work, and
that you'll stay with us this fall for the new crop of stories that are
just around the corner.
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