Talk:Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

On coherence (plot summary)

VeryRarelyStable (talk) 22:07, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

We need to talk about this. Pinging GoneIn60 and PNW Raven.

Coherence is the principle underlying all the rules of what constitutes "good writing". It has one basic principle, and that is communication. If you are communicating effectively to the reader, your coherence is good. If you're making things difficult for the reader, your coherence is bad. In plain prose, such as is appropriate for an encyclopaedia or a textbook, nothing matters except communication. Coherence boils down to making sure that your reader has enough contextual information at each point to understand what they're about to read – building up a picture in their head without having to go back and rearrange what's already there.

Awkwardness matters because of coherence. Grammar matters because of coherence. Everything that matters in factual plain prose writing, matters because of coherence.

Avoiding repetition and backtracking is a good thing if, and only if, it is done in a coherent manner. I'm afraid the recent changes do not serve that purpose. I'm thinking of this one in particular:

Previous	Latest change
They find Zia and assist her in transfusing Blue with Tyrannosaurus blood... Wu wants Blue's DNA to create an enhanced Indoraptor, unaware that Blue's blood has been contaminated.	They find Zia with Blue... Wu wants Blue's DNA to create an enhanced Indoraptor, unaware that Blue's blood was contaminated when Zia previously transfused Blue with Tyrannosaurus blood.

I'm sorry, but this is terrible for coherence. The reader has been told nothing about the transfusion and now has to do a mental leap back and rearrange the picture they had in their head from the previous paragraph. (It also completely erases the part that Owen and Claire had in this thread of the narrative, unclear as that already was; the remaining sentence "They find Zia with Blue" conveys no useful information whatsoever.) It's a reasonable idea generally to put each piece of information in one paragraph instead of spreading it out piecemeal – but that is solely because that usually makes it more coherent. When it makes it less coherent, as here, you do not do it.

So I'm going to give people time to come to this Talk page and read what I've just said, and then I'm going to change it back.

The same applies – though much less strongly – to this edit:

Previous	Latest change
Maisie leads them to the auction where the Indoraptor is being bid on...	Maisie leads them to where the Indoraptor is being auctioned...

The intent, I'm guessing, was to use "being auctioned" rather than the slightly clumsy "being bid on", while avoiding repeating the word "auction". But it does so at the expense of making it look like the Indoraptor is being auctioned in isolation rather than as part of the auction, the larger event whose occurrence has already been established.

My own edits to this sentence read "Maisie leads them to the auction where the Indoraptor is being sold..." "Sold" avoids the clumsiness of "bid on"; the word "being" is sufficient to establish that the process of sale is incomplete at the point when Maisie leads them there; the fact that the selling is occurring at an auction is sufficient to tell the reader that the process of sale takes the form of an auction.

By the way, the style guide I use, and the reference for my explanation of "coherence" above, is Steven Pinker's book The Sense of Style, which does the very important job of explaining why good writing habits are good rather than merely laying out rules. He does focus on what's called "classic" style, recommended for op-eds and blog posts, which is a bit different from the "plain" style appropriate for encyclopaedias and textbooks. But the principles of coherent communication are the same.

VeryRarelyStable (talk) 22:07, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

It is not our job to explain or retell every single part of the movie to a reader. The plot summary is supposed to be a "brief" synopsis of the film--an overview. It is unnecessary and unimportant that readers know that Clair and Owen helped Zia give Blue a transfusion, nor is it necessary to explain that the transfusion was given at that time. It is only relevant that Blue's blood was tainted as a result of a transfusion and it should be mentioned when Wu's intention is revealed. The synopsis does not need to be linear, and events can be related at different time points from when they occurred. Also, it was already established that the dinosaurs were going to be sold at an auction. It is therefore unnecessary to clarify that Maisie is leading them to the auction where the Indo is being sold along with the other dinosaurs. That is already implied. I suggest reviewing the "Jurassic World" plot summary. I made a few recent changes, but I thought the way it was written is a good example of summarizing the plot in a brief, coherent manner, without including unnecessary details.PNW Raven (talk)

First of all, if you thought I was advocating "explaining or retelling every single part of the movie", then I must be an exceedingly poor communicator, because I said nothing of the kind.

If it is "unnecessary and unimportant that readers know that Claire and Owen helped Zia give Blue a transfusion", then why is it necessary or important that they know that Claire and Owen found Zia aboard the ship? Why not simply say "They sneak aboard the mercenaries' ship just before it departs for the US mainland"?

I am aware that the synopsis doesn't need to be linear; in fact at the moment I think it's still slightly too linear (though it doesn't bug me enough that I'll annoy people by rearranging it just for that). The problem I have with the recent edit is that an event is being related retrospectively, thus creating a sort of mental whiplash in the reader. If you feel a burning need to clump the whole transfusion subplot into one place, it would be better to do something like

They find Zia and assist her in transfusing Blue with Tyrannosaurus blood – thus contaminating her DNA, to Dr Henry Wu's later consternation.

—which I still don't recommend because now it's pulling a "Dr Henry Wu" into the conversation before he's been properly introduced, but it's better than the current version.

It seems that despite all the talk we've had already, we never actually settled explicitly on an answer to the question: What is necessary and what is not? "We don't need to put in every detail" is evidently not a sufficient answer to that question. I'm not merely complaining about excluding points like

• Owen, Claire, and Franklin have to flee from the volcanic eruption
• Owen and Claire procure the Tyrannosaurus blood for Zia to give to Blue
• The instrument of the Indoraptor's death is a Triceratops skull

but querying why, if these are deemed to fall below the notability threshold, we still need to explicitly include points like

• Owen, Claire, and Franklin reunite before they leave the island
• Owen, Claire, and Franklin meet Zia aboard the mercenary ship
• The purpose of procuring the dinosaurs from the island is unknown to the viewer at the point of departure

and I'm still waiting for an explanation.

On the lesser matter of the sentence about the auction: first, the setting has just changed, and it's clearer to name that setting at the start of the sentence than to make the reader recall something from a paragraph ago. Second, no, it is not clear that the Indoraptor is being auctioned with the other dinosaurs, because up until this point all we've told the reader is that an auction is planned, not that it is taking place. "Maisie leads them to the auction" is enough to make that unambiguous. "Maisie leads them to where the Indoraptor is being auctioned" leaves it a bit late – we have to construct an auction in our heads at the same time that we're thinking about what's happening to the Indoraptor.

—VeryRarelyStable (talk) 01:49, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

It is NOT necessary to clarify that the setting has changed or worry that the reader will be "confused" about whether or not the planned auction is actually the same one that took place. It just doesn't matter. Over and over I have stressed that this is intended as a "brief" plot summary, and you insist on adding unimportant details. We are not Cliff Notes and this is not substitute for watching the movie. I actually agree that there is no reason to add that Claire, Owen, and Franklin "reunite" and have taken it out. I've gradually chipped away the excessive detail like how Claire and Franklin were in the gyrosphere to escape the pyroclastic flow and that they went over the cliff into the ocean and Owen jumped in to free them and on and on. It becomes an issue of deleting fluff while having to leave "something" that another editor wrote just to appease them, and it makes for awkward sentence structure. I don't arbitrarily take another person's work out, but when it does not serve the overall article, then it should go. Too many editors fall in love with some particular scene and/or phrasing and will not let it go. For example, insisting on stating that the indoraptor was impaled on the skull to 'prove' it is actually dead when readers know it died because the summary says that it fell to its death.

Regarding the "unknown purpose" of why the dinos are being removed from the island, that is actually answered in the next paragraph when Maisie overhears the conversation. It's mentioned that Claire, Owen, and Franklin find Zia because all four continue to be part of the narrative. The readers do not need to know details like Owen and Claire assisted Zia by getting blood from the T. rex and then helped with the transfusion, etc. This information is not needed and the blood being contaminated is covered later. I also don't think things like Wheatley extracting a trophy tooth from the Indo. should be included. It should just be stated that he and the auctioneer were killed during the chaos.PNW Raven (talk)

"The blood being contaminated is covered later." Later is exactly what I'm objecting to – this breaches the principle of coherence because it forces the reader to backtrack. You should not force the reader to backtrack.

Of course the information about Owen and Claire assisting the transfusion isn't needed. We also don't need to know that they are estranged. We don't need to know that the dinosaurs were sold by auction. We don't need to know the name of the Indoraptor. We don't, come to that, need this Wikipedia page to exist at all.

What I'm trying to get at here is that "This information isn't needed" does not suffice to answer the question "Why should it be cut?"

The reader can infer that Owen and Claire meet Zia again – or they could, when the plot summary still made it clear that they cooperated to give Blue the transfusion. As it stands now, Owen and Claire meet Zia and then – do nothing. Zia is not mentioned again. In that sense, this information truly isn't (or wasn't) needed – the reader's brain could supply it. The reader cannot infer, from the present synopsis, how Blue came to receive a transfusion of Tyrannosaurus blood. It's just hanging in space. The plot synopsis is supposed to be an explanation of the plot, which it can't be if it leaves things hanging in space.

I came to this page originally because I saw a reviewer complaining about some information not being in the plot summary, that they'd tried to look up and been unable to find (namely "What kind of dinosaur was that that we saw dying on the docks?") I put it in the plot summary initially but, through the back-and-forth of editing and being edited, decided that it was more significant for its frequent mentions in reviews than for its place in the plot, and shifted it to the "Reception" section.

That's as good an indication as I've ever had of what information readers need from a Wikipedia page. Somebody actually asked for it. How many readers have you heard asking why they're burdened with the useless information of how Blue came to have contaminated blood?

You do stress that it's a brief plot summary. We all know it's a brief plot summary But "Maisie leads them to the auction where the Indoraptor is being sold" isn't appreciably longer than "Maisie leads them to where the Indoraptor is being auctioned". It sacrifices coherence in the ways that I have described to save a grand total of — two words.

I have to go now. I will come back. And I will edit the plot summary as I've indicated unless you can convince me that I am mistaken. Remember, the fact that some piece of information "isn't needed" will not convince me. You need to show me why the information that is there is more important.

—VeryRarelyStable (talk) 22:57, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that what we have currently is much better than what we had before. Although there are still a few remaining issues like the ones addressed above, they are rather minor in the scope of what's been achieved. VeryRarelyStable, I agree with your last point about the auction. Adding two words that provides some additional clarity is totally worth it. We want to keep things brief, but that doesn't mean cutting out every inessential detail. While some are obviously an insignificant waste of space and should be cut without question, others may help fill gaps, transitions, describe settings, or even aid with characterization, despite being somewhat insignificant. My overall point is that there are varying degrees of insignificance.

Take the extraction of a tooth for a trophy, for example. Is it essential to the plot? No, but it does describe a character (in this case, a character's stupidity) that lends a hand in providing some context as to why the armed, mercenary team leader was killed (or even mentioned to begin with in that scene). One could even infer from that tooth extraction that this action of stupidity led to the Indorapter escaping its cage. That to me is on a different level than say the other insignificant detail of mentioning that Owen jumped in to free Claire and Franklin from the gyrosphere.

If we eliminated every single detail that wasn't crucial to the plot, we'd end up with a paragraph or two containing maybe 200 words at most. Because we are given a range of 400-700, we can provide more descriptive transitions and context with details that are mildly significant but not crucial. At one point, we were nearing 700 words, but now we're hovering at 620 and some change. While I don't think we need to add much more, one or two additional clarifications wouldn't hurt. --GoneIn60 (talk) 06:13, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Let me also add that I prefer the previous version of the text that described the blood transfusion. PNW Raven, you have done an excellent job in cleaning up this plot summary, and I don't think we'd be at the point we're at now if it wasn't for all your hard work. So please don't take either of these two assessments personally. Neither version of the auction or blood transfusion text is necessarily wrong, I just agree with VeryRarelyStable that the plot summary seemed a bit more coherent before those changes. My 2¢ anyway. --GoneIn60 (talk) 06:22, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I will leave in the earlier part about the transfusion, but I've reworded it to streamline the prose and eliminated the prepositional phrasing. Please work on writing without an overabundance of prepositions. They weaken sentences. Also avoid overly familiar phrasing such as "manage to." These only add "dead weight" to an article. Avoid all cliches and anything sounding even vaguely familiar.PNW Raven (talk)

Yes, I agree that we should work to reduce those when possible, but "in time" needed to remain, so I've changed that statement to present tense. --GoneIn60 (talk) 11:15, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for doing this. It's much more coherent now. Sorry for getting a bit het up over it earlier on. —VeryRarelyStable (talk) 00:23, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Box office

Hi! First time contributor here. Think I found a mistake in this statement: "The film (...) It also made Universal the second studio (behind Disney) to have at least two films in three different franchises make $1 billion worldwide, alongside The Fast and the Furious and Despicable Me." The 'Jurassic Park' franchise already had at least two films make $1 billion worldwide, with both 'Jurassic Park' and 'Jurassic World' making over $1 billion. So this statement seems redundant. Kind regards! Julian De Backer JulianBelgium (talk) 09:17, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

GOCE needs to update its policy on the passive voice

Hey Twofingered Typist, I mostly like what you're doing, but in several places you've changed sentences around in ways that make the text flow worse, not better, because they introduce a new subject out of the blue and only later connect it with the ongoing topic. And in each case you've done this by changing a passive sentence to an active one. Is that really the level of linguistic understanding that the Guild of Copy-Editors is at?

To whom it may concern (NeoBatfreak?): I haven't finished the copy edit yet - I've only done a first pass. I'll make sure the changes make sense. Generally when writing it's a good idea to avoid passive sentences if possible. The GOCE has no policies on editing practices. You are, of course, free to make any changes you wish! Twofingered Typist (talk) 21:16, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, forgot to sign my edit, I always do that. VeryRarelyStable (talk) 21:50, 15 August 2018 (UTC) (not NeoBatFreak). I have discussed coherence on this talk page before; I've a feeling the relevant section may have been archived. But the single most important use for the passive voice is to allow a natural flow from one topic to the next. Each sentence should begin with a topic whose relation to the text preceding it is clear, and then introduce any novel elements or switches of topic later on. Thus, if the object of the action is related to the topic of the previous sentence, and the agent of the action is a novel element not mentioned in the previous sentence, the passive is more appropriate than the active. I'll refer you to Steven Pinker's book The Sense of Style.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2018)

Please make page of track of movie — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.215.255.14 (talk) 11:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)