You have an inordinate number of comma splices going on. Which is why I said 'comments soon', I'm still looking at a way to revise your sentences so the same expressions can be made, just in a better order of syntax. 

yeah, the comma thing annoyed me. Which is why I came here. Though taking out a piece of the one sentence allowed me to take out a comma or two. 

That's partly because of your use of descriptive annotations in the text. This isn't a bad thing, you just want to make sure it's not too verbose, and that you're able to counter it or you'll lose readers.

Rick Moody fell prey to this, go pick up a copy of "The Diviners" and see what I mean. It's a book with an amazing plot, the character development is overt, but very unique. The only flaw in the book, and oh how expansive it is, would be that Moody over annotates everything he talks about.

Kinda like the "Talk like dooky" thread. 

i see 

Man... laziness is taking its toll on me.

Always add in chapters as you go... I just write the story down and add in line breaks on occasion, at least now I do. But since I'm rewriting my first story I've realized I wrote an awful lot without chapters or line breaks. And now as I try to fill out my Timeline (which helps a lot) I find myself being unable to remember what happened when and what should happen when.

And, a question unrelated to the above topic, somewhat:

There first story, the one I am doing the Timeline on, is about a killer. Who kills and tortures lots of people. I had an idea to add in a body count. I'm not sure how to implant the idea whether I want it page by page (at the top or in a corner somewhere) or at the beginning or end of chapters...

what you guys think? 

I think you can use body counts as a way of designating chapters. The discerning reader shouldn't have any problem figuring out what's going on when they see "14 dead" instead of "chapter 2" if they follow the plot. If one thinks about it, chapters are nothing more than way points through the book. "Chapter 2" doesn't progress the plot nearly as well as "another 9 down" does in a large heading at the end of a scene. 

I wrote the following a few years ago. I like it, myself, but I'm curious to see how somebody else might respond to it.

O Queen! of such wonderous beauty gallow-glassed
That should remain like glass over every sight
That should remain sweet as a little death
Through every blink that beholds a new world, and new strength required to eat
Still you Queen
Your fair body like a noose
And your mind like a triangular block
Alive and greeting pronouncements and achievements, different keys,
a windowless door never seen,
Independent strength and a killing softness
Hidden, yet caressing every view or thought
Alive like a sparkling diatom crushed when touched with a fingertip
Spreading life like the dawn
Queen and creator of life
That should remain like a baby's cry on a spring day greeted by a little death
And a queen seen through thickets of leaves
O Queen! of such wonderous beauty flickered in shadow of a darkening forest,
Such wonderous beauty glimpsed through thickening vines,
Such beauty never seen
O Queen! Flecks of a little death speckle everything, and the darkening is too much to bear-
Can you bring back yesterday, and the life that you made,
Can we forget everything until we forget this death,
And the end of all your life? 

dooky said:

I think you can use body counts as a way of designating chapters.

/my $.02
Cool idea. 

That's good stuff. 

I have a meeting today with the head honcho of an independent movie production company (which has substantial mainstream successes). I have over a dozen script ideas but no pages. The meeting is for unrelated business. Should I pitch him anyway? 

just tell him you got some ideas you might can put together if he asks. 

I'd write in here, but I'd have to strike for lack of compensation. 

LOL, SMB.

That was what I was thinking, VesperDrow.....wedge my foot in the door, but don't bust it in. 

Yeah, don't bug him about it, just let him know what you can do. 

I wrote the following line and can not, for the life of me, think of anything to follow it up with:

__________________ 

________________________ ! 

didn't think about it in that context. Thank you !!!! 

I'll be.. 

Something that just fell out of my head, prolly because I've just recently watched something on the order of 25 hours worth of Ghost in the Shell over the last couple weeks...
'Near' future cyberpunk stuff. Doubt I could stretch it into more than a short story...

Toko awoke suddenly, bolting upright, gasping for air and clutching at her chest; the nightmares had returned. The dreams of fire and falling and twisted steel that seemed to go on forever, overlaid with the screams of a dozen people she swore she knew but whose faces never came into focus. She sat there for a moment to catch her breath when the fuzzy, static-laden image of Karl became apparent.

“Nightmares again, love,” he asked in his hollow, crackle-filled voice, feigning concern as he sat there in Toko’s old recliner, looking like he belonged on a television with bad reception.

“Go away, Karl,” she said between breaths.

“Ain’t goin’ anywhere, love,” he chuckled as he lay back, none of his movements ever causing things in the real world to react. “You know you’re stuck with me, will be forever. That’s what happens when you kill a man for real when you’re hacking his brain; all that data’s gotta go somewhere.”

She threw a pillow across the room at him and Karl pretended to shield himself while the pillow passed through his unreal form, but it made no difference; when Karl wanted attention, he made every effort to get it.

“Ever gonna tell me what those nightmare are about, love?”

“You live in my head, you tell me,” Toko exasperatedly let out as she flopped back down.

“I may be ‘lingering personality residue’ that’s staining your neural networks, love, but one thing I am not is a mind reader.” Karl got up and walked over to the window, then turned and leaned against it; Toko stopped wondering just how he knew what things in her field of view to react with long ago. “Besides, you’d think that after all the work I’ve done for you; I’d deserve a little better treatment.”

Toko had figured out a way to make Karl serve some useful purpose years ago, mostly as a way to keep herself sane; it turned out that as long as she was online, Karl could wander the net on his own. It was a little distracting when she was awake so she usually let him snoop around while she slept, although, she could never tell the lieutenant that; not only would she lose her badge but she’d get a one-way trip to Bellevue’s technopsychosis ward where, if she was lucky, the process of removing all her implants wouldn’t turn her into a vegetable.

“Fine,” she grumbled, rolling over and pulling the covers over her head, “show me something interesting in the morning and I’ll plug some of that porn you like.”

“Oh, love,” he said with a big smile on his face, “you do know how to motivate me.” 

The meeting with the producer was postponed, but in the rescheduling email I was able to ask for (and receive) the promise of a personal (just talk about the movie business) meeting over the holidays. Woot!

Hmm....Austin Powers screenplay was written in three weeks, I guess I better busy. 

Bravo, Bravo. 

Rejection letter #23 of the twenty-three queries came in this morning.

IT'S BONFIRE TIME!!!! 

meh, I broke down and got Oblivion. I only got one day off this week, and probably next as well. So I'm going to basically stay up all day and night to make the most of my time. I figured if Oblivion is as interesting as I hope, it'll help.

not much writing to do the next few weeks anyway. 

I've still been struggling with procrastination on getting this service up for Fazed users to post writings and what not.

Basically, the format would be a user page with a list of writings. 

im trying to write a story. i was going to just start at the top and let it go, but after reading this thread, i started an outline.

i got farther in 2 days on the outline than i did in 2 months on the story.

and i do mean word count wise, not how far into the story, altho that does hold true as well.

thanks fazed 

Hey. Writing. nifty.

I've been pretty prolific in poetry over the last couple years, though I'm not too sure about a lot of it.

here's a pretty weird angsty kind of thing. I think it sucks.

here's a huge collection of my work from the last couple years. I've been slacking lately.

here's my latest offering.

maybe I'll do fiction again eventually, but I've got more of a knack for poetry, I think. 

I just wanted to point out that I wish I had known about this thread earlier in the year. My Composition I class finishes in 3 weeks, and we've done 2 papers that require peer editing. My dilemma is the peers in my group are all ESL, so all I get back on my essays is "it's good" "flows good" "I liked it"...all of which, while nice to hear/read, are completely useless when it comes to editing.

I turned in my last "peer edited" paper today, and out of the 6 suggested changes I got from 3 people, I incorporated one. I was curious if someone could point out any mistakes I may have made with it (grammar, word usage, diction, etc.)

http://www.youshare.com/view.php?file=VeteransDayUneasiness.doc 

You'll have to trust me when I say that I usually shred things like that when asked. Yours is good. I didn't scrutinize it for minor spelling punctuation errors, but on the whole, I didn't notice anything wrong.

The paper is crisp and to the point. Do you have a length requirement? I did find it rather short considering the gravity of the subject matter.

I wrote a similar paper back in college. I used the laughable complexities of navigating the Army College Loan Repayment Program to show a dramatic contrast against some tragic civilian deaths in Operation Just Cause. I think you could do the same thing here with a little more length and developing more of a tempo. In my opinion, building up to the importance and gravity of heroic action in the face of death can be best done by punching the reader in the face with it. 

"flows good"

someone else caught this 

I twitched. 

I did have a limit, actually...~500 words. I probably will go more in-depth with it should I have a longer assignment in the future.

No offense, but I don't see the correlation between the ACLRP and civilian deaths...then again, I'm medicated right now. It might make sense to me when I'm a little soberer.

I don't know that the point of my paper was to glorify heroic action...I thought it was more about my being uncomfortable with being put in the same "category" as those who did so much more than I did. That's the beauty of writing, though, not everyone sees the same picture. 

No offense, but I don't see the correlation between the ACLRP and civilian deaths...then again, I'm medicated right now. It might make sense to me when I'm a little soberer.

My post was a little brief...it would make sense if you read my essay. Basically it was a comparison of two aspects of military experience...the 'hurry up and wait' red-tape bullshit vs. cruelty of warfare. I went into tedious detail about the ACLRP to illustrate how frustrating and inefficient the Army is....even when it came to distributing a benefit that influences enlistments. Then I abruptly switched to a graphic description of the improper use of deadly force within this same frustrating and inefficient framework.

I didn't say anything about glorifying heroic action. My suggestion was to illustrate the difference between Veterans who saw 'action' and those that did a support job. To me, that is 'why' you feel uncomfortable, is it not? So....make your reader feel uncomfortable too. Just a thought. 

hey guys critique this short story thing I wrote in college. It's one of like 20 internal monologues I wrote... I was gonna try and make a novel that was bounced between characters, and was gonna use the monologues as an intro to them. But then I decided it was a) too rules of attractiony and b) too complicated and dropped it.

but I still like this particular one. Looking for comments, advice, whatever. Got more if you want em. Workshop the shit outta my shit, mang! 

A simple text message on my cell phone sent off to a friend far far away. “Jag finns depad.” The reply came just as I expected: “Du är deppad? Förlåt :(.” That's as much Swedish as I knew, and she knew it. But I got the response I wanted. I am depressed. You are depressed? Sorry. She didn't care, and I knew she didn't care. In fact I wasn't sure I cared. I wasn't even sure it was true. I wasn't depressed. But I was pissed off, and intelligent, and when a smart guy is pissed off but not yelling about it people think he's depressed. So I ran with it. People pay you a lot more attention when they think you're a depressed intellectual and I spend so much of my time trying to look like a depressed intellectual that I've never had to worry about finding friends. This brings me here, in this apartment with people who might be considered friends, if they weren’t so fake. I'm fake.
I light another cigarette, and take a long drag. I like to people watch. I like to take pieces of other people's personalities and add them to my own. I am a jumble of everyone I know. Everyone has something about me they like, and this is of course because I have stolen a part of every person I've met. The appreciation for the works of Louis Althusser came from my roommate. My adoration of vodka from my father. My need to write came from my mother, and I stole the inability to finish anything I start from my brother. My political beliefs I stole from Kurt Cobain and John Lennon, after I stole Nirvana and the Beatles as my favorite bands. I am proof that nurture can conquer nature. Just because I was born one Zane O’Mara does not mean I can not morph myself into another Zane O’Mara, for better or worse.
I take another long drag. I hate these people. These "friends". Why do I surround myself with people that annoy me so much? To feel important, superior, I suppose. But I am. You should see my bookshelf. None of those books are thin. You should see me drink, I can out drink everyone. I am superior. I am a God among men. A self abusive, suffering, alcoholic philosopher like my father and my father's father, and Jesus Christ. Well maybe not Jesus. I wonder if I would still be agnostic if I knew Jesus personally. I wonder if I could beat him in a theological debate. I bet I could. I surround myself with inferiors.
I take a final drag on the cigarette and flick it into a nearby cup. The cup’s owner, a shaggy neo-hippie type protests, but I ignore him. Without hesitation I light another cigarette. "Life is shit, get used to cigarettes." Robin Williams said that, mocking the French. I don't know any French people. I should meet some. Steal bits and pieces of them until I am again whole. I am a soul feeding, self abusive, alcoholic philosopher who feels superior to others because he is superior. I am awesome. I promise.
I take a drag on my cigarette, still watching the apes around me playing with their toys, drinking their drinks, copulating on the couch. These people are a lot like me. I have a lot in common with them. I have stolen all their best parts, but I am still no better than them. For all I know they've stolen parts of me, and in effect, parts of each other or even themselves without knowing. Christ, half of what I think I am might be a lie. I hadn't thought of that. Where did the parts I steal come from? They could have come from Hitler, my sister, or even me. Jesus, I don't want to be like me. I'm so much better now.
I mix myself another drink, strangely content with the knowledge that I am the Kamchatka Vodka that tries so hard to look like Stolichnaya, but fails on the basest levels. At least I look good on the outside. 

I am a jumble of everyone I know. Everyone has something about me they like, and this is of course because I have stolen a part of every person I've met.

That is both incredibly deep, and incredibly dangerous. 

it comes off as sounding kinda like I can make the character do whatever I want and just be like "eh, he stole that part", in retrospect. But that's not the intent. 

wait, i don't understand...we're supposed to write about summertime? or was that take 1 and now the thread title is changed to take 3 and it's something else? 

Eh, take one had a poor take off (PUNS LOL!). I mentioned writing a simple web app for fazers to go and post their stuff so we wouldn't get bombarded with walls of text all the time.

I'll try to register a domain sometime this weekend and get to work on it. 

Oh, and no. Take 3 means this thread has been tried twice before this one and they didn't go as far. Just a little fazed quirk. 

sixfoot4: Summertime was an old topic suggestion that didn't see much activity.

gypsypm5k: /puts on Camel-hair-elbow-pad jacket. I'm not a fan of that type of character development. I'd rather be shown all that as the plot progresses. That type of character is great in-so-far as lots of opportunity for conflict...but I'm reminded of Fight Club a lot by this one. 

I was trying to think of a good movie that had a mix minded character, FC kind of came to mind but he was really only two people.

Plus you know...you dont talk about fight club. 

..fight club was a book first, mang 

dooky said:

I was trying to think of a good movie that had a mix minded character,

You mean somebody with multiple personalities? 

Yeah. 

primal fear 

Sybil. 

Mix-minded?

So this is the PC term now? Fuck. 

Yeah, that's what the PC crowd came up with. "Mix-minded". 

ah, we all know the crazy lobby prefers "crazy". 

VesperDrow
So, whose interested?

Hey Cool !