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 (nobody)...and 385 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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Members 8025Messages 2614103 Today 0 Topics 127542 |
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Hi there, I would like a couple of people here to read through Part 1 of my book; for suggestions, pointing out errors in continuity, tone, pace--that sort of thing. If you're up for it, please notify me! |
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zounds but my laptop is currently breaking so I can't do it now. How many pizages? |
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What sort of book? |
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It's a 500 page work called 'Teh Gayness of Drunken Mastah'. |
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I am utterly qualified for this job, you'll find no one better. I am, after all, a homosexual man. |
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Sorry, misread topic as Poof Reader Required. Disregard my first post. |
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Social Sciences? |
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Please try the xltronic sandbox if you need practice xltronicing. |
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All I know is its completely non fiction. |
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It's the story of siblings Alice & Miles Evergreen. They relocate with their parents to the coastal village West Summerton, where Alice is lonely while Miles makes friends with local lad, Dominic. The story begins with their discovery of Chymes Hall, a run-down building to the north of the village; haunted. Alice embraces this and befriends the spirit of an old houseboy, Tom, while Dominic rejects it, spending his time with Dominic. Alice represents the ethereal. Miles represents the physical. Projected length: 35,000 - 40,000 words. |
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Hmm.. I'm not really into fiction, so I probably wouldn't be of much help. |
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If your average xltronic post is maybe 40 words, you've written the volume of this book twenty times over at xltronic. Does this story have any mummies in it? |
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- In other news, I am currently working on a trance version of The Imperial March AKA Darth Vader's Theme. Expect it in the charts come summer-time! ...Or at least on some g33k star wars website... |
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if it's not as wonky as your novellas/short stories/whatever they were that i read then i'll give it a go. |
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i only read philip k dick and hp lovecraft. |
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i'd be into reading it, be it as a proof-reader or not. give us an email |
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Well staz, they are two of my favourite writers. Optimus, I have no idea what of mine you have read. Aer Aengu, expect an eMail shortly (I'm working on the breakdown of this wretched Imperial March |
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please note that while i find your older stuff wonky i am sincere in wanting to check this out. |
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your ebooks or whatever that you put up on soulseek. this was years and years and years ago when people still liked me. |
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OK, I'll mail you a copy also. |
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It's currently 17,500 words. |
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hey humbert humbert, i'll be reading this for style since that's the thing i obsess over. i just opened the file. why are you so fascinated by commas? After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother, Miles, ran zigzagged through Devil’s Wood. and that's only the first sentence. if you work like me then you probably use commas as thoughtful pauses. you really don't need any commas at all here, but then of course it wouldn't come across as sophisticated as you'd like it to, right? After the rain Alice Evergreen and her brother Miles ran zigzagged through Devil's Wood. bleh! it might work for someone else but that's not your style. After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother Miles ran zigzagged through Devil's Wood. okay, we might be getting somewhere now. but something is adamant about making this sentence annoyingly clumsy. i think it has to do with your awkward use of 'zigzagged'. After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother Miles ran zigzagging through Devil's Wood. there we go. i feel that i can continue onwards now. Pine trees stood slippery and tall, mossy and aching. dang, i was hoping to make it further than the second sentence. why are they slippery? did the children attempt climbing up them? the narrator? i know i'm not the brightest guy around, but something definitely seems wrong here. why the need to start with Pine trees? why be economical with central determiners but not commas? i feel sorry for this sentence. i'm not even sure why it's even there since it doesn't add to the atmosphere. everything else in the opening paragraph serves that purpose wonderfully (yeah, i skipped ahead a little). i mean: it starts with Pine, it has alliteration that makes my tongue hurt to read it (alliteration should never, ever do this as it defeats the whole point of alliteration in literature), and for no reason whatsover the trees are aching. there's no saving this sentence and in any case it adds nothing. drop it. |
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to sum up that post, this is what i believe the first two sentences should be: After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother Miles ran zigzagging through Devil’s Wood. Miles whooped, arms flung outstretched like aircraft wings. |
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His sister, less prone to spontaneity than her younger brother, contented herself by skipping along the dewy path, enjoying the smell of damp fern and pine cones. COMMAS!!!!!!!!!!!! His sister was less prone to spontaneity than her younger brother and contented herself by skipping along the dewy path, enjoying the smell of damp fern and pine cones. yay, now it's not a chore to read. |
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After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother, Miles, ran zigzagged through Devil’s Wood. Pine trees stood slippery and tall, mossy and aching. Miles whooped, arms flung outstretched like aircraft wings. His sister, less prone to spontaneity than her younger brother, contented herself by skipping along the dewy path, enjoying the smell of damp fern and pine cones. vs. After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother Miles ran zigzagging through Devil’s Wood. Miles whooped, arms flung outstretched like aircraft wings. His sister was less prone to spontaneity than her younger brother and contented herself by skipping along the dewy path, enjoying the smell of damp fern and pine cones. the former would never be published. |
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Miles swooped down upon a stick which slightly resembled a crude gun, i already know the stick resembles a 'crude gun' because it's a bloody stick! just have it resemble whatever gun you intended it to resemble: Miles swooped down upon a stick which slightly resembled a -----gun also, saying something 'slightly' resembled something leaves absolutely NO impact on the reader. nobody cares when something only 'slightly' resembles something. have it resemble it and ignite your reader's imagination! p.s. there's no reason to have a comma in this sentence either. especially since the action after it is supposed to be 'immediate'. why would there be a pause before something immediate? Miles swooped down upon a stick which slightly resembled a crude gun, and immediately dashed along a fallen tree trunk, firing upon an imaginary enemy. vs. Miles swooped down upon a stick which resembled an old-fashioned gun and immediately dashed along a fallen tree trunk, firing upon an imaginary enemy. of course, 'old-fashioned' would be whatever type of gun you intended the stick to resemble. |
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Alice smiled after him, changing her skip into a run as she gave chase, hopping on stones and cracking old twigs and branches underfoot. 'changing' doesn't come across as very girlish to me. Alice smiled after him, her skip becoming a run as she gave chase, hopping on stones and cracking old twigs and branches underfoot. whatever you want to change it to is probably fine. outside of that one word, i really, really like this sentence. i can totally feel those stones and twigs and branches beneath my feet as i read it. |
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you're killing me, marlowe. They leapt across the smallish brook which sauntered quietly through the wood and into the field beyond, and ran the last few yards to the edges of Devil’s Wood. i don't care who you are or what kind of writer you purport to be: brooks do not saunter. the sentence also reads as though the brook is running the last few yards and not the children. i honestly have no idea what exactly is going on in this sentence since it's so confusing. and why 'edges'? it should just be 'edge'. i'm not sure if it's because i'm tired but i don't even know where to begin when it comes to fixing this sentence. so far the worst part of reading the story is how obvious it is that you put a lot of effort into each and every sentence. i have a feeling that you're very self-conscious when you write. you have to lose yourself in your own story when you write it in order to give it that effortless feeling which all the classics have. actually, i just read the next few paragraphs -- the ones with dialogue and such -- and they're definitely a lot smoother than the first paragraph. perhaps you just had to get into your Groove first. |
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okay, so you have this sentence in the first paragraph: His sister, less prone to spontaneity than her younger brother, contented herself by skipping along the dewy path, enjoying the smell of damp fern and pine cones. and then in the next paragraph you have: Alice, being of a less reckless disposition than her younger brother, walked alongside the fence until she found a sagging section of it. did you run out of ideas already? i hate to say this, marlowe, but from what i've read from you i think you're more of a storyteller than a writer, if you know what i mean. you definitely have what it takes, but as of right now you haven't even found your own unique voice yet. you're a fugly rock with some cool-looking crystals trapped inside. i know that one of the worst parts of being an aspiring writer is not having the right people to show your stuff to. you can't just let your girlfriend read it and some old buddies from university; you need people who are going to look at your stuff as serious attempts at literature and that's what i'm trying to do here. i don't think i can continue as i have since it's very time-consuming and you may just laugh at it all, but when i have more time i'll keep reading the story as a Story since i can tell it's going to be a very enjoyable one. |
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there's absolutely nothing wrong with "ran zigzagged". It's ironic - you were waffling on about commas, and you wrote "ran zigzagging" as a correction (or at least a suggestion). If you're going to use "zigzagging", there needs to be a comma before it: After the rain, Alice Evergreen and her brother Miles ran, zigzagging through Devil's Wood. Pine trees stood slippery and tall, mossy and aching. dang, i was hoping to make it further than the second sentence. why are they slippery? did the children attempt climbing up them? the narrator? i know i'm not the brightest guy around, but something definitely seems wrong here. why the need to start with Pine trees? why be economical with central determiners but not commas? i feel sorry for this sentence. ok it sounds like you're just trying to throw shit now (is it impossible to observe the slipperyness of a tree? why must the narrator explain why the trees are slippery?). i'll stop reading your critique and after reading the full text myself, will post my own thoughts. You're the fella with whom I had an argument about finnegans wake, yeah? yeah? thought so. |
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your correction of my 'correction' is nasty. like i said in the beginning, i was reading for style, and the word 'zigzagged' is very awkward sounding, especially in the opening sentence that's supposed to draw me in. i'm not sure if we had an argument. i think i just mentioned how i read finnegans wake in a couple of weeks and it drove you nuts, since you believed the book was meant to be studied rather than read. |
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Well whatever about finnegans wake (yes, that is my stance), i don't see how my correction is "nasty." I just found it amusing that you were lambasting marlowe about his usage of commas, and then you recommended he use a construction that absolutely requires a comma, while leaving it out yourself. |
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What's wrong with the commas? It makes more sense with "her brother, Miles," than without the commas, especially if there's some point to examining the physical and ethereal as separate (but related; siblings) entities: Without the comma, they're a unity. With the comma, they're not, but through their family relationship, they retain relation. I'm not really sure about marlowe's intentions here, though, but I also think the other commas give a better feel, as they're kind of fragmenting the whole thing, which makes it look more like what you'd get from a person who is really one person, but considers him/herself as consisting of two different parts. |
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i think you're reading into it a bit too much. they're just aids in reading the text. |
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it doesn't absolutely require it. welcome to Literature. |
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Maybe. That's why I don't like fiction. It's usually more ambiguous than other types of texts, and when you argue about it with someone, you get arguments about the writers' intentions rather than between the positions exhibited by two people's differing opinions. I also just noted the actual structural difference between the sentence with the commas and without them, between separation and inclusion. |
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this isn't the type of story where fragmentation works as a stylistic device. but marlowe's story should be given as many different readings by as many different people as possible, since i hope/believe he's serious about it. i was reading it for style and NOT grammar, which is confusing redrum a great deal. |
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i'd like the exerpt when the story is done |
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I'm British, we still use commas: call us old-fashioned :) An example is the brook - the very fact that there is a comma indicates that it is not the brook, but the children, who run the last few yards! About the story-teller thing: that's good because I've never seen story-telling as my strong point - my work has always been descriptive-heavy, and with this work I was deliberately trying to work on the story-telling aspect: it is (for lack of a better pigeon-hole) a children's story, and children want a story, not two pages describing something (see 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', where Wilde spends page after page describing furnishings). Anyway, try & get past the disagreement in punctuation and enjoy the rest of it. |
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in regards to that brook sentence: what you say is true technically but it's not how it actually reads. adults will be very much confused by it, nevermind children (yes, they'll understand your intention, but i'm afraid that isn't good enough). your response to that makes it clear you think your book is too good for a serious reading. so i'll stop giving an objective, want-to-help-get-you-published viewpoint and just read the story in its apparently perfect form. |
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Optimus, why are acting with such pomposity? |
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optimus definately knows his shit. respect. |
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*definitely |
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why thank you! |
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*bows politely* |
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because i'm posting on xltronic and you came across as condescending in your defence of the brook sentence? to be honest, i was surprised to read your story and find it amateurish (i'm not trying to make fun of you here), since you're one of the many people on this site who hates my writing. it proved that i can't take what anyone who claims to be an authority on writing here seriously. anyway, how about we lose the pomposity then. your other stories are bad: badly written, badly told, with nothing unique in the telling. the writing in this story isn't much of a step up but at least it *is* a step up. i'm not sure if you only view writing as a minor hobby but it doesn't seem like you've written or write all that much. the way that you're telling this story is basic, but as you say it started out as a 'children's story' so that's forg-- wait, why am i forgiving you and your book because you decided to take it in a different direction? are you going to put up a disclaimer in the beginning? 'This started out as a children's book so please go easy on it.' sorry, pompous digression there. i was going to say that i enjoy how you're telling this story. as i said before, i think you're a better storyteller than a writer, and the fact that you think you're a better writer than a storyteller just shows how much you're aware of your own writing. you come across as living in a bubble. that's not a personal attack, that's just how you come across in regards to your writing. i enjoy this story. i'm just not sure how much a thorough reading you want done, or if you're even willing to openly talk about your story. if you think anything i have to say is worthless, then i'll stop giving a unique, objective viewpoint on it. if you're interested in what i have to offer as a fellow writer then we can continue outside of xltronic and drop any pomposity, condescension, whatever. |
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I read your latest story, btw, but I had to run before I could comment. I think there's something missing from your texts lately that used to be there. I like to call it clinicity, but that's not a word, so it doesn't have to make sense. I mean the kind of clinical clean eerie feeling some of your other texts had without wearing it on their sleeves. The latest one was a bit too cozy. It also ended a bit abruptly. |
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i know what you mean, but after spending about four-to-five years writing nothing but 'clinical' stories i felt the desire to go in a different direction. i was actually planning on going back and rewriting some of them but the excitement wasn't there anymore. :( |
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I never said anything about 'go easy on it' because it started as a children's book: I said, because of that, I wanted to veer away from pages of descriptive passages, to have the story itself be the engine. The majority of your text seems to be concerned with the usage of commas: punctuation is a personal thing & my use of it does not go against the English language, just against your stance on its usage - I write according to the interior mono- and dialogues in my head at the time, the cadences of my inner speech: if you don't like it, fair enough - there are many writing styles and people have their preferences. As regards to the level of professionalism in my writing: this is the first draft & I already pointed out that it was inconsistent in tone because it is evolving: the rewrite is for ironing out the inconsistencies. Also, I have been published & quoted, which, though may not be proof against amateurism, certainly suggests that it is not so amateurish as to be unpublishable. The very fact that I have people reading the manuscript for suggestions etc (both on the internet & people I personally know, of all ages), is proof enough that I do not regard it as 'perfect'. |
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this is hilarious |
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