i love that charles dickens got paid by the word. like i cant even be mad when he’s boring and long-winded bc i would do xactly the same??? i wouldnt use contractions or colours at all. want to say the word red? too bad. we r now only using “the colour of freshly-spilled blood on snow; the hue of the horizon when the sun sets over the deserts of sub-saharan Africa” BOOM guess who can afford 2 eat now: me and my boi dickens
What I love about Alexandre Dumas, in contrast, is he got paid by the line. So it’s not really wordy, it more like 80% dialogue which makes it sound pretty modern but also ends up like-
“Where are we going now?”
“We are going to the city.”
“Which city?”
“Paris.”
“We are going to Paris?”
“Yes.”
# can you imagine the kind of extended torture we would have been subject to if victor hugo had been paid by the pun (via vlajean)
is George RR Martin paid by deaths