action, afterstory, allegory, alliteration, ambience, anagnorisis, analogy, anecdote, antagonism, antihero, apologue, aposiopesis, archetype, argumentation, Aristotlean drama, artistic license, asyndeton, attribute, attribution, audience, auditory sense, backstory, bathos, breakout character, caricature, causation, cause, character, Chekov's gun, climax, comedy, comic relief, companion, comparison, composite character, conceit, confidant, conflation, conflict, connotation, continuity, contrast, countersink, deadfall, deathtrap, decision plot, denotation, denouement, description, desire, deuteragonist, dialogue tag, dialogue, diction, Dischism, discourse, drama, dramatic premise, effect, element, emotive appeal, enmity, epiphany, epistolary novel, equilibrium, eucatastrophe, explanation plot, exposition, expressions and gestures, extras characters, eyeblink, fable, fairy tale, falling action, false document, false interiorization, false protagonist, false verisimilitude, farce, feature, figurative meaning, first cause, first person plural, first person, flashback, flashforward, focal characters, foil, folklore, foreshadow, fourth wall, fuzz, genre, goal, gustatory sense, hero, high-concept premise, homage, imagery, imaginative premise, in medias res, inciting moment, indirect discourse, internal discourse, internal monologue, irony, juxtaposition, literal meaning, low-concept premise, MacGuffin, magnitude, maxim, means, message, metafiction, metaphor, metonymy, milieu, monologue, monomyth, mood, moral, motif, motive, mystery, myth, mythology, narration, narrative arch, narrative hook, narrator, nemesis, olfactory sense, ontological riff, opportunity, opposition, overstatement, pace, parable, paratext, parody, pastiche, pathetic fallacy, pathos, person, personification, place, plot coupon, plot hole, plot, point of view, polysyndeton, problem/purpose, prop object, proportion, protagonism, reaction, resolution plot, resolution, resonance, revelation plot, reversal, rhetoric, rhythm, rising action, romantic interest, scene, scheme, second person, sensory detail, setting, sidekick, simile, situation, solution plot, squid in the mouth, squid on the mantelpiece, story arc, style, stylism, summary, supporting character, suspense, suspension of disbelief, symbolism, sympathetic character, synecdoche, syntagmatic structure, syntax, tactile sense, tang in the jar, tempo, tense, tension, theme, third person, thriller, time, tone, tragedy, triagonist, trick ending plot, trope, understatement, unspoken discourse, verisimilitude, vignette, visual sense, voice, white room setting.

And your point is?

Edited to add that a lexicon is more or less a dictionary, one for a specific purpose--in this case a dictionary of writing terms, or in JK Rowling's case, a dictionary of characters and spells and so on from the Harry Potter series.

Edited to also add that JK Rowling was not bullying the guy. She was fine with him putting his lexicon on the internet for anyone to read for free. She just objected to him publishing it and making money from her copyrighted material without her permission.

Take the term antagonist that has been a contentious topic in another thread. At its simplest definition for story usage, it's the forces of opposition confronting the protagonist. However, I've sensed there's a subtler context of antagonism in story, subtler than contention, conflict, confrontation, or conflagration. I've found antagonism used in codeterminate, cooperative, or coordinate interactions as well. Digging deep, I found what I was looking for at http://johnaugust.com/jawiki/antagonist.

Looking up the lexicon definitions provides for deeper understanding of their usage in story. Incorporating them here would have made for a dense, hard, and brittle posting. So for writers whose lexicons are under development, I provided my list. Perhaps it might be the basis of treasure hunt or scavenger hunt game.

One lesser point was to see if anyone might appreciably add to the list with something I've overlooked.

I'd like to encourage you to consider taking each word and, one by one (so people aren't overwhelmed), creating topics to discuss what you've found about them.

Just because there is already a topic about antagonists, doesn't mean there couldn't be another one, one that discusses the deeper meanings of the word as you have found them.

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I'd like to encourage you to consider taking each word and, one by one (so people aren't overwhelmed), creating topics to discuss what you've found about them.

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That's a daunting challenge, two hundred plus terms, in and of itself a worthy one nonetheless. In my experience, every comment made at a workshop is worth consideration, even the rough ones provide learning opportunities. There's always an intuitive insight behind a negative response, sentiments and preferences notwithstanding. I believe the same progress and insight might result from discussions of writing techniques and forms, as well as the lexicon of writing.

To go about this I think a single story to draw examples from would be essential. A universally accessible story would be necessary for demonstration purposes. But there I've already run afoul of individual preferences. One remarkable short story comes to mind that's available at Gutenberg. "The Stoker and the Stars" by Algirdas Jonas Budrys http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/22967 about 4,500 words. I'd nominate it for the discussion in homage to a fallen master bard.

Any suggestions would be welcome. Whether there's interest is also of concern to me. What do you-all think? Are you game? Antagonism first?

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Edited to also add that JK Rowling was not bullying the guy. She was fine with him putting his lexicon on the internet for anyone to read for free. She just objected to him publishing it and making money from her copyrighted material without her permission.

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http://hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2008-04-20.shtml

It's true he accuses her of bullying. He also says, "Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling." Much as I enjoy Hatrack and respect its sponsor, on this issue I think he's wrong.

But why derail extrinsic's thread with remarks about a different lexicon?

I still don't understand the point of a list of words without definitions. Nor do I understand why writers might be expected to make lexicons. For me a few dictionaries, style guides, and a synonym finder are fine. Why write a lexicon when you could write a story?

(An aside: It's not "share the list in it's current rendition", it's "share the list in its current rendition". Do you want to add "apostrophe, correct usage of" to your lexicon? ;-)

Spoof and spoil / Rumble and tumble / Bubble and boil / A bucketful of cold water. I'd almost given up on my quest for reasoned, thoughtful engagement on writing topics. My gaze was wandering toward resuming the journey elsewhere.

Tang in the jar and Dischism both are defined at the Turkey City Lexicon http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html. I'd encountered those story faux pas on several occasions and felt discombobulated by them. Unable to put my finger on what put me off, I've passed over commenting on them in workshopped stories.

The tang in the jar one usually feels trite. Essentially, it's a special form of the trick ending plot, where a protagonist discovers at the end of the story he's been in a petrie dish-like environment under the scrutiny of a higher power. My objection to that kind of ending is I feel cheated by the emotional investment I've made in the protagonist's predicament, only to find the story's been little more than a travelog of a rat in a behavioral scientist's maze. As a reader, I feel like the writer has run me through the maze for his own delight.

A Dischism is when the writer's surroundings wind up in a story. The typical Dischism I've encountered is having the protagonist wake up in a mood, smoke a cigarette, and drink a cup of coffee before plot movement starts. I've encountered subtler forms of Dischisms in other workshopped stories. One common example is the static action of standing or sitting, watching, waiting for some event to occur. Thomas Disch is credited with distinguishing the phenomena.

Polysyndeton, is in Webster's, but I found a more helpful definition and practical usage and example in Gideon O. Burton's Silva Rhetoricae at http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm. I've also encountered scrutiny of polysyndeton as a writing technique in New Criticism literary analyses of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy's stories. Faulkner's stream of consciousness technique employs polysyndeton. McCarthy's technique of using polysyndeton slows reading tempo during physical descriptions. Since his descriptions typically require closer reading to appreciate the nuance, I find what grammarians consider a grammatical vice a rhetorical virtue.

Extrinsic - do you speak the same way to write? I think I would feel mush mouthed if we had a conversation in person. I find I have to go through your posts a couple of times before I understand what you are saying (with a dictionary of course). But truthfully, I thoroughly enjoy it. I could swear some of the words you use are made up - until I find them in the dictionary, LoL!

And your details on "Tang in the jar", "Dischism", and "Polysyndeton" are superb! I would enjoy it if you were to continue to post focused discussions on specific writing concepts. It would be wicked sweet to see them.

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while on the subject - anyone know the best way to broaden one's vocab?

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while on the subject - anyone know the best way to broaden one's vocab? I don't struggle too bad with coming up with what I say, but I would love to have a larger depository of words to draw readily on to help with writing

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But really, the best way to increase vocab is to read read read. Look up any words you aren't familiar with, then read some more. Read stuff out of your genre, read high-falutin' stuff, read magazines, trade journals, scientific papers, histories, what have you.

I don't know about best, but one thing I do (in addition to reading of course) is a revision pass over a piece specifically looking for words I've over-used. (I have an annoying tendency to use the same word over and over.) Using a synonym finder or thesaurus, I deliberately search for words that have the right nuance, or add some richness to the scene somehow.

One of the most useful dictionary/synonym finders I use (because it's quick) is WordWeb, a free download at http://wordweb.info/free/

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My writerly lexicon is a supermarket inventory, one writer's repertoire, shop, buy, or boycott, but please don't squeeze the fragile goods. I fail to understand how bracketing an inconsiderate remark with an emoticon, a smilie, an IMHO, a LOL, etc. makes it any less inconsiderate, especially when it's the cyber equivalent of rubbing someone's nose in a dirty little mess.

Spoof and spoil / Rumble and tumble / Bubble and boil / A bucketful of cold water. I'd almost given up on my quest for reasoned, thoughtful engagement on writing topics. My gaze was wandering toward resuming the journey elsewhere.

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When the post is about a lexicon of writing terms and includes a panoply of words, some of which one has never seen before, one does not expect elementary errors such as "it's" instead of "its". I'm not sure whether pointing the error out, or the manner of it, was the cause of offence. Whichever it was, I apologise.

When I make such errors I like to think I laugh at myself; the English regard the ability to laugh at oneself as a virtue. For me the emoticon was an indicator of consideration, meaning "you know and I know it was an error, and it was amusing, wasn't it, in a post which apparently professed erudition."

As for the cold water, I'm not sure where that came from but if it was my question about the objective of the lexicon, it was a serious question, answered at the top of the Turkey City Lexicon (for which thanks, by the way, I had forgotten its existence; and the hyperlinks don't work unless one deletes the terminating full stops) which says, "Having an accurate and descriptive critical term for a common SF problem makes it easier to recognize and discuss." Okay, so now I undertand the objective.

Your list of words is curious; it doesn't include all the terms from Turkey City, gingerbread for example. What are the criteria for inclusion in your lexicon?

I think there's a danger in exercises like this of using (or worse, inventing) long words when short ones will better communicate. For example, telling me that my writing is polysyndetonic is unlikely to be helpful, not least because the word isn't in either of the electronic dictionaries I have on this computer (concise OED and aforementioned WordWeb). But if you tell me I use too many "ands" in close proximity, I'll reply that I know it's a style frowned upon by grammatical types and I don't care and I borrowed from Ian Fleming and if it's good enough for him and his sales it's good enough for me and that, in certain contexts, I like it.

In the same vein, what does "tang in the jar" add to "trick ending"?

"Dischism" seems to me even more useless as a term, because it doesn't mean "after the style of Disch" but something rather the opposite. Furthermore, a new writer--and they're the ones usually guilty of this--is surely going to find "get your own life out of the story" much more useful as a comment than "don't do Dischisms." (But phrased considerately, of course.)

Yet, "Heinleinism" is perhaps a useful term (working information unobtrusively into the story's basic structure) but not on your list.

Some terms I do like from the Turkey list (because they don't obfuscate and you can intuit what they mean) include eyeball kick, steam grommet factory, space western and intellectual sexiness.

From your list, I recognise 'MacGuffin', 'trope' and 'white room setting' as terms I've found useful to understand; but without the definitions of the words I don't understand (metonymy and synecdoche, to name but two) nor the criteria for inclusion in the list, I don't know how to have a meaningful discussion.

As others have said, perhaps you should share some of the definitions that interest or bother you, or maybe put the whole thing on a blog or a website so you can truly share and develop it.

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Was Baker(the one who mutinied and surrendered) the Stoker?

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I don't think that's off topic. Neither the protagonist nor the first-person narrator are named in the story, which would likely elicit numerous remarks in most any present-day workshop. Whether it's a flaw or to a good effect is, in my opinion, a subjective matter.

Baker presumably is the man sharing authority with Cope in the time and place of surrender. Baker opposes Cope's Marine Corps do or die to the last man preference, related later in the story. So Baker shot Cope and surrendered in the face of insurmountable opposition. I think mutiny is an opinion of the narrator reflecting humanity's blaming the loss on one person.

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the hyperlinks don't work unless one deletes the terminating full stops

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I tested the link before I let it go. It worked for me and, apparently, for others. I've noted several others remarking that links in some posts didn't work, checked, and found no problems myself. However, I suspect network accesses might vary sufficiently for there to be a conflict. Browser and/or server file protocols are probably the culprit. So in future I'll be sure to manually bracket the url with UBB codes when it's an inline link followed with a period ending a sentence.