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ygert comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Unrelated to the latest chapters:
Inspired by RomeoStevens's comment in this thread, I am going over HPMOR, summarizing each chapter in a haiku. Tell me what you think:
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 23:
Jumping ahead to my favorite chapters, though the tone is nonstandard for the medium.
Patronus (chp 43)
Dementor (chp 43)
Dementation (chp 44)
Poetry is a union of form and content. Putting something into the form of a haiku is essentially trivial, so most haiku writers focus on content instead; however, your content should also be familiar to everyone reading, so you can't win there. (Also, #2 and #4 have 6 and 5 syllables in their respective second lines.)
Limericks would be good, if you could pull those off. Obviously, it would be harder. That's sort of the point, though: to impress people with form, you have to do something that isn't easy to do. On the other hand, if you write 101+ limericks, you'll probably be good at limericks by the end.
(Half good; I'm told the other half of limerick writing is that they have to be dirty and/or funny, ideally both.)
Not for those who've had the time to forget about the contents of the story. This could be a useful way for people to remind themselves of the rough structure of the story without re-reading everything.
I don't know. I think there is a virtue in succinctness, an art that appears when things are put into a tightly limited form. It makes you look at what is essential, and so shows the essence.
Maybe I'll try limericks next. It's as good an idea as any, I suppose.
Different people pronounce things differently, so arguing over syllable numbers is going to be be frustrating, but can you tell me how you see 6 syllables in line 2 of #2? Do you pronounce "tales" as a single syllable?
You are certainly right about #4 though, so thanks for the pointer. I changed it. It lost a bit of punch, but whatever. If I am building elegance out of restrictions, I had better keep to them.
Some more:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7
Bonus one:
And another:
Nice.
Rewrite of Chapter 6:
I like it. I think that's definitely an improvement on the last line.
Here are a few more:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
And another:
And:
And:
Like Kindly, I pronounce 'tales’ with one syllable, but if it's two for you, then OK.
As for content, I'm fairly pleased with these, except for #4. Having the last two lines run together as a single sentence without a break seems inappropriate. Maybe rewrite it so that ‘Metal currency!’ is the last line?
Yeah, I had to quickly rewrite #4 at the last minute after Kindly pointed out that my original version had an unambiguous 6 syllables in line 2. So it is no surprise that my hurried rewrite was less good.
Out of interest, how do you pronounce "tales"? I seem to pronounce it something on the order of "tay-uls". So how do you pronounce it as a single syllable?
When speaking naturally and counting syllables, I pronounce ‘tales’ and ‘tells’ largely the same; the vowel in the first is longer and slightly higher (/e:/ vs /ϵ/). But when emphasizing (‘not tells, TALES’), I would do more like your ‘tay-uls’.