Dr. Jerry Pournelle's advice to writers from advice given to him by Robert Heinlein

[@landonmiller6943]

Truly great science fiction author, one of the best. He is missed...

[@WritersoftheFuture]

Sorely missed!

[@titus2120]

Thank you, sir. And thank you for paying it forward to me from Mr. Heinlein. I guess it’s time for me to get started.

[@WritersoftheFuture]

Excellent!

[@b_ks]

Very good video. I'll comment when I can refrain from gushing praise. Permanently bookmarked in my writing folder.

[@hurdygurdyguy1]

1:25 .. Poul Anderson said, "we're competing for people's beer money." Yep!

[@williamleslie4939]

During the Chaos Manor period (Byte magazine) I corresponded with him quite a bit. He had a red and blue custom letterhead and he would use a daisy wheel printer (Diablo) to make it look like the letters were typed. I never agreed with his (or Niven's) politics but he sure could write. And he knew quite a bit about early computer systems.

[@Orieni]

I miss Jerry, and his stories.

Sage advice!

[@ZingsVideos]

Good advice for multiple professions, including music and software development. One difference today though is that it's easier to go indie.

[@joespheagles5798]

Great advice passed forward from one of the best to another of the best plus the comment on knowing the rules before you break them is the same advice my creative writing teacher said to the class when I was in high school back in the70's then she made us write poems and stories and plays using the best standards of English just like she taught us poetry is the most precise and concise use of the language to evoke images and feelings.

[@WritersoftheFuture]

It was really important for Jerry to pay forward to next generations of writers. He was a Contest judge for many years and valued his ability to pass along what he learned.

[@jebtexas3048]

God bless & keep Jerry Pournelle. He was one of a kind.

[@DrWhom]

a poor author

[@racookster]

Great advice, and harder to follow than it sounds. I do get the impression that Heinlein often wrote without knowing what his finished "building" was going to look like, though. His later stuff especially read as if he just randomly stacked bricks. That's not true of Pournelle's (and Niven's) work, however. They seemed to start with a full set of blueprints.

[@WritersoftheFuture]

Great point!

[@mikec1341]

Except for Janissaries.

[@somercet1]

I'm sorry, but _Job_ and _Friday_ hang together terrifically well. Compare Gore Vidal, who started perhaps his most (in)famous novel with little more than "one thundering voice": "I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess." He would later tell Prof. Harry Kloman he'd had no idea Myra was [major spoiler redacted] until halfway through the book. And it was only years after the book was written that he realized where it had come from: "As I read _Incest,_ I realized that something which I had always taken to be unique, the voice of Myra Breckinridge, was actually that of Anaïs [Nin] in all the flowing megalomania of the diaries. Of course, I had not read the diaries then, but even so, if only for that one thundering voice, I am forever in her debt." Once you master the form, you can set up a general schema and then improvise.

[@PatAdeff]

Outstanding advice from a man who knows what he's talking about!

[@anthonyleecollins9319]

Very good advice to learn the rules first, before you think about experimenting and breaking some of the rules. Applies to music, too, for example. The best experimental jazz musicians knew how to play "trad" jazz (and sometimes R&B and whatever, too) before they started to play "outside."

[@WritersoftheFuture]

I knew Chick Corea and he could play all the Etudes (from memory) and many other classical "trad" music and from there was able to make his own rules. Truly brilliant.

[@FlyinBrianMeyers]

Wonderful advice from a wonderful man!

[@tuber00009]

Absolute gem! What a guy!

[@DrWhom]

not a nice guy at all

[@itz_alex4043]

Actually I like Moon is a harsh mistress it's a good story

[@JanRademan]

Feersum Endjinn is the exception to the rule.

[@nathanielhellerstein5871]

Re linguistic experimentation; most experiments fail.

[@WritersoftheFuture]

That is an absolute fact. As people don't see the 99.9% failure, but rather only the 0.1% successful experiments.

[@mikebruzzone9570]

mb

[@NancyLebovitz]

"Use grammatical English, anything but standard English annoys people". That's why no one likes The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

[@WritersoftheFuture]

I definitely prefer standard English. I am not distracted from the story.

[@racookster]

Heinlein knew the rules like the back of his hand before he broke them, though. Also, the pidgin he invented for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was partly based on Russian, and he knew its rules, too. That's why Mannie didn't use articles. Russian doesn't have them.

[@davidgross13]

That's why life on the mississippi is such a disliked story

[@mpetersen6]

One problem when writing dialog. People in casual conversations rarely speak proper grammatical English. They use abbreviations. They talk over each other. They use slang. Often they use place holders. Or short responses to others. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress RAH took words from from various languages which may have been slang in those languages. A good example is Stilyagi. Another is Cobber.