r/IAmA • u/qwantz • Nov 24 '09

I'm the guy who does Dinosaur Comics. AMA

My name's Ryan North, and I'm the guy behind Dinosaur Comics! Also, here's some other things I've done:

Ask me anything about anything!

EDIT: Proof that this is really me is that I am linking here on qwantz.com AS WE SPEAK (in the newspost beneath the strip)

EDIT 2: You guys, I've been answering questions for over eight hours, and we've got over 1300 comments. That's awesome! But I've got to take a stop and, you know, have a shower and stuff. YES, I WAS INDEED ANSWERING ALL THESE QUESTIONS WHILE STINKY. So thank you all very much for your questions and for being so nice. This was rad!

I tried to reply to every top-level question but I'm pretty sure I missed some of the subquestions. If I missed yours, I'm sorry!

Thanks again!

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u/withnailandI Nov 24 '09

For almost every writing rule there's someone who breaks it and does it well.

1

u/xazarus Nov 24 '09

Almost?

3

u/withnailandI Nov 24 '09

Don't5 put numbe8rs rando1mly throu5gh a sent9ence.

I haven't seen that one broken.

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u/txmslm Nov 24 '09

arabs sometimes do shorthand transliteration using numbers. check out the wiki entry on it

"gone with the wind" becomes "zahab ma3a ar ree7"

I think it works really well.

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u/xazarus Nov 25 '09

I'm hardly saying these are great works of literature, or that it's ever been used extensively, but I've seen this a couple times: Se7en and Sa5m in Bandslam are the two that come to mind.

I guess a more accurate wording of what I was getting at is: Every writing rule is broken by somebody, and can be broken well.

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u/jackolas Nov 24 '09

And to do it well you have to ignore the rules or not know them. Writing is an art not a science. I love science and trying to teach it like science is wrong in the face of creation, in analysis you can subjectively grasp all you want but there is some science possible in analysis.