Soooooo…

By G. K. Werner

             So there's this mindless obsession with so.

             So does every interviewee’s response, every politician’s thought, every reporter’s topic, every educator’s polemic have to start with so as if it’s a transition that can be indiscriminately used without any hint of a previously related statement, thought, or suggestion whatsoever. Call me a real so-and-so for diagnosing this so highly communicable communication disease, but somebody had to do so. It’s so pandemic.

             So what, you ask?

             So filler words are fine in their place. OK? Well, almost every language has them. Now, they’re usually banned in formal writing, but perfectly acceptable when used sparingly in conversation among friends, or even in oh so polite conversation among barely tolerable acquaintances.

             So I normally appreciate our living, ever-morphing language; and do so work at being so open-minded, so tolerant, so non-judgmental. But this is becoming so fundamentally debilitating, so downright abusive that I fear for the English language’s so-called health and longevity.

             So many civilizations have fallen to plagues just so. Egypt’s pharaoh, played by Yul Brenner in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic movie The Ten Commandments, says “So let it be written, so let it be done” so much that Egypt eventually gets done exactly as it was written. France’s Marie Antoinette says “So let them eat cake” so much that her people eventually slice hers. So too, the Soviet Union became the latest victim of so’s assault when so many millions of Russians started asking “So what’s on TV?” These are just a few cautionary examples of a nation’s fate when a conjunction spins radically out of control.

             So here’s the skinny on so’s definition and usage. It’s a conjunction, folks. Or an adverb. Or an interjection. Maybe even an exclamation. Not a transition. So get over it! As an adverb, it denotes degree, extent, or amount. It can be a synonym for consequently, likewise, apparently, or indeed; or an expression of astonishment, disappointment, or sarcasm. As a conjunction it is preferably followed by that as in—I always throw in a so so that I have an extra beat to figure out what to say. But may stand alone as in—Everyone’s doing it so I will too. But remember, so makes no sense when nothing precedes it.

             So if you must use so as a filler, all I ask is please, please, please—not so often.

             So that’s my so-so opinion.

             So long.

Copyright © 2013 by G. K. Werner. All rights reserved.

12-3-12

Hi folks,

We hope you are enjoying Narrow Way Storytellers. Here you'll discover past ages that are much like the present, strange worlds that are strangely familiar, supernatural conflicts that are frighteningly natural; and people just like us making life and death decisions in the carnage of a fallen world. This is because storytelling is not a creative act. An unusual statement to be found on a new storytelling site? But think about it.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” Solomon proclaimed in the Old Testament. “Is there anything of which one can say, 'Look! This is something new?' It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)

What about Star Trek?.........................Sinbad the Sailor in space.

Superman?...........................................Hercules.

Butch and Sundance?..........................Robin and John.

Alien abduction stories with beckoning lights, circular shapes and time distortions?..........................................Fairy tales with faerie lanterns, toadstool rings and overnight stays in the Perilous Realm from which the abducted return years later unchanged.

And long before those tales?

Let's go all the way back. “In the beginning, God created...” (Genesis 1:1) What humankind presumptuously calls creativity is nothing more than rearrangement, reconfiguration—sub-creation. The father of today's heroic fantasy, JRR Tolkien, described storytellers as sub-creators beckoning readers to explore artfully constructed, self-consistent secondary worlds. (Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, p37)

Fantasy? Science Fiction? Historical Fiction? All sub-creation. Though the sum of the parts may be presented in a fresh and distinctive manner, the parts are drawn from God's creation—His story. And God's creation is all there is. Anything else out there beyond our sight—well, God made that too.

Consider aliens and the monsters of antiquity—composites and distortions of the known. A famous SF writer (whose name escapes me—help!) once said that anything truly alien in literature or film would, by definition, be incomprehensible to the reader, unimaginable for the writer. Pegasus after all was horse and bird in one.

Spock's ears?..............................................Check out the elves.

Elves?..........................................................Humans with pointy ears.

What about Tolkien's Middle-Earth?..........The operative word here is earth.

The world of Faerie, like that galaxy far, far away, is our world mythologized. Its civilizations, ours reorganized. Its beings and creatures, our peoples and beasts reconstructed. Victor Frankenstein's step-children inhabit patchwork worlds constructed with God-created building blocks. Man the creator? For God, its been there, done that. Nothing new under this sun or any other.

And where does a storyteller's imagination come from in the first place? It's part of God's creation, of course.

So what about Narrow Way Storytellers? Never been done before? Well...not quite like this. Praise the Lord for His gift of human sub-creation let loose on an unsuspecting primary world.

--GKW