Sunlite - Good idea. I'm reading a page/blog about writing fiction already (it has good points but I'm getting lost in the sub-pages and I'll google around for more examples anyhow). Do you have any specific blogs/sites/books in mind?
Telling rather than showing, it's a kind of thing that can make a story feel flat and a bit distant?
I recognize the dialog issue, I think that's one of the most annoying thing I can think of. At the moment.
Dr. Drib - Did you mean any specific book written by Iser or Fish?
I googled and found a lot of academic texts and what seems like meta-analyses on the theory (I'll check the references and see if I can manage to read through the sources... although I'd hope for a light version in a blog or something
)
I found some wiki explaining the theory a bit. Sounds a lot like the communication theories we've had lectures about in school - how communication never is just one-way. The listener interprets what's said, hopefully but rarely in a way close to what the talker intended. We applied it to text books, but I never thought about it with fiction. That's interestiong.
I'll investigate this theory further.
Btw, I'm not familiar with the term ''technical books''.. it makes me think of IKEAs manuals or something. But does it mean scientific/academic texts?