If you wrote a mindfuck of a science-fiction novel out of this idea I'd buy it.

I live by the theory that if time travel machines were invented in the future, they'd exist already. See, the person who invents it will have created one of the greatest inventions mankind has ever known. However, after the invention comes into being, someone to the future of that will take the machine and go back in time and claim to have invented it earlier. And then earlier and earlier, so that time machines have always and will always be around.

Well, either that or your hard drive idea axpanded into a universal four dimensional time-map where molecular placement can be distorted and arranged to accomodate for people existing in different times, different places at the same time, and I suppose, if you could mess about with molecular placement all you want, you could create people on a whim according to this program "time machine" which would be more of a god program, I guess.

The sentences are disorganised and it's riddled with cliches, but other than that it's got a good base for an interesting genre story; conflict, character development, motives and action. In the hands of a good writer, that could be a very interesting story.

Worst short story will always be subjective. Worst *anything* will always be subjective. O.o

At 11/8/09 12:32 PM, Mechabloby wrote:

At 11/8/09 12:24 PM, WritersBlock wrote: Remembered another one: Anthony Burgess's 'A Clockwork Orange'. Despite being one of the strangest books I've ever read (along with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time), it's totally intense with the brutal polar opposites of free-willed violence and torture-driven peace, a bit of a 'stuck between a rock and a hard place scenario', it's disturbing in the whole tone and coolness that it's told, real horrorshow.

I read both of those books when I was 14 and loved them. Some of the vocabulary used for A Clockwork Orange - although can be baffling - is great as it leaves you to think for yourself with what it could possibly mean. The fact that I prefer the book's ending over the movie's means that I believe it to be a must-read since that movie is actually one of my favourites of all time.

<SPOILER WARNING>
Absolutely, yes. I read the book before I watched the film, and I think the ending just ties off the whole message of the book real well. As for the movie, it captured the vibe of the book really well, although I thought the attempted suicide scene was signposted with way too obvious remarks such as "when I listen to Beethoven's symphony I want to kill myself". In the book the music was something to avoid, and a suicide attempt was the only outlet, and while it was much the same in the movie, him mentioning that before he gets locked in the room just sucked the spontanaety of the moment from the film. Other than that, I thought it was brilliant.
<END SPOILERS>

And while I'm at it: I loved the charm to The Curious Incident With The Dog In The Night-Time - the basic language usage is highly relevant to a child/teenage with asperger's syndrome and same with some of the behaviours of the main character, too - the ending actually nearly had me in tears. Powerful book - well researched - and from a skilled author. I need to get Mark Haddon's book about the mid-life crisis too since both of my parents are near to it, I could compare them and the book to each other. :P

The book was brimming with so much character, and I loved the fact that the book is apparently about one thing, but through the narrator (being in the condition that he is), another, more relevant story is inadvertently told, and that's where the whole thing gets its impact. It was a really beautiful story. I can't even begin to imagine how much effot Haddon must have invested in order to write that book.

At 11/8/09 12:17 PM, Mechabloby wrote: Is there any more books or novellas that people have found disturbing? I like to read a lot so if I can order a few books soon then it'll be great.

Remembered another one: Anthony Burgess's 'A Clockwork Orange'. Despite being one of the strangest books I've ever read (along with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time), it's totally intense with the brutal polar opposites of free-willed violence and torture-driven peace, a bit of a 'stuck between a rock and a hard place scenario', it's disturbing in the whole tone and coolness that it's told, real horrorshow.

At 11/8/09 12:05 PM, Blush wrote: There was a short story by the author of fight club called "guts". It was incredibly nasty, and I felt sick after a couple paragraphs.

Lmao that's a great read. I just finished a novel called "Breath" which draws lightly on parallels with the story, as it starts out with a paramedic driving out to a house where a mother and father have found their son accidentally suffocated himself as a means of increasing his pleasure. It didn't really feel particularly intense for me until the last probably quarter of the book. It digresses a lot and it doesn't really shock so much as the material could, but it hits home hard and it was a damn good read. That's Breath, by Tim Winton.

And I guess in a similar sense, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy is also a good read. It's very uneventful for most of the book, but there's a couple of pages that fuck shit up that it's truly, deeply disturbing. Other than that, maybe a bit of H.P. Lovecraft or Stephen King, typical horror stuff.

I guess he don't want to walk this way. And I suppose that means they're on permanent vacation, unless they decide to come together and get back in the saddle again. But this sort of things happens to all bands sooner or later, it's the same old song and dance, and it just means they're coming around full circle again.

Booyah!

At 11/8/09 11:38 AM, MattTheParanoidKat wrote: Alright Mr. TheReno, I would like for you to give me feedback on my story (anyone else, feel free to do so aswell).

FYI: Please for the love of all that is holy, do not I repeat DO NOT give my story a grade, do not give it a rating between 0-10 or 1-10. It's obscene when reviewers do this, and there is no rational behind this other than if it's a big number it's good, if it's a small number it's bad, if it's neither it's okay. It's also gratuitously obscene when you give ratings with a decimals. It's sickening. Look, when you do that you're not rating the numbers out of ten, in reality you're rating them on a possible 100.

That's just vulgar. All I want you to do is give me a review; analyze the problems you've had with it and what you either liked or disliked about it.

That's all, thank you.

You know the judges rate your stories out of 10?
But I do see what you mean. They're more for your own judging rather than 'your story was worth this many numbers', but on another scale, it can be useful when sizing a story up to its potential. Whether you have to fix something up a little or a lot. Depends on how you take your feedbackLEARN TO COPE WITH FEEDBACK MAN! Jeez, what a buttwipe. I'm gonna give this guy a 2.36 out of 11.

@Scarab: That's an interesting looking piece of software you've got there. I've heard it mentioned before, but haven't really looked into what it does. I'd probably definitely take a closer look at it if I probe further into scriptwriting, as manual editing is a bitch. But then again, you can do things your own style if you're left to your own devices, but after 5-6 pages of fully loaded dialogue, I quickly got sick of centering and capitalising the name, then hitting enter then tabbing three times then writing the line then hitting enter twice then centering and capitalising the name then hitting enter again then three tabs again and yadda yadda yadda (pic below). As for whatever bells and whistles that come withi it, I probably wouldn't bother at all. I tried using yWriter quite recently, for the novel I've started writing for NaNoWriMo, but I've found the notepad to be much more convenient for planning and drafts. Simply put, just writing a standard story, something like Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer cover everything I need, and, like I said before, I can set it out exactly as I want it, without anything being hideously in the way.

@TheReno: Sure. That'd be great.

At 11/7/09 07:27 PM, Scarab wrote: it had been sitting on my "must-read list" for some time. My main motivations for reading it included the usual lust for just getting to grips with various examples of modern classic literature

I haven't read Animal Farm yet, but I intend to some day. I've got Nineteen-Eighty Four sitting on my list of books to read for a little while now. Slowly chewing through it, but then I know I'll add to the pile sooner than I can chop it down. I don't really know much about politics and history, so I'd most certainly have a different reading of the story than yourself, however, I always find it interesting to see the various subjective interpretations of a single text, however I feel like you've objectified your ideas on the text really well and provided readers like myself with a lot more to think about when my day comes to read Animal Farm (and to some extent, Nineteen-Eighty Four, too).

However, I should hope that my ability to analyse texts like this will improve in the future, as I'll be spending the next two years going through Literary and Cultural Studies at university. After one semester, I've found the benefits to be very rewarding, and it's certainly given me a keener eye for classic literature, modern classics, or even the postmodern literary fiction of today.

I certainly look forward to the day where we can openly discuss this sort of thing in a writing/literature forum, as per the quite recent news announcement.

At 11/8/09 09:38 AM, FigishPig3000 wrote: I'd have to say Aerodynamic, by Daft Punk.

Well, I'm not sure if that count as an unknown band, but it was unknown to me until about 5 weeks ago.

It's just been one of my favourite songs by Daft Punk for the past eight years...

Anywho, I'd suggest 'Stay Away From Me' by The Living End, off their 1996 EP 'It's for your own good', but I couldn't find it on youtube. Their singing's improved a lot since back then, but the instrumental talent's been kickass from the start. Upright bass riff kicks ass. Rock and roll, baby, rock and roll.

Then I thought of another awesome song that not many people have heard of. So I thought 'Stop Breathing' by Augie March, off their 1998 EP 'Thanks for the memes', but I couldn't find it on youtube either. If you ever manage to wrap your ears around either song (particularly the latter), you won't regret it.

So then I went with something I knew I could find on youtube. Evol Intent's 'The Curtain Falls' off their 2007 album 'Era of diversion'. It's really interesting sounding IDM, very atmospheric stuff. I had the album, but never listened to it much, and one day I just oncovered this little gem and it's been a favourite ever since.

Linkage.

As always, I'd love a bit of feedback.

To those unsure of their own credibility as critiques, I only have this to offer: If you can accurately explain what you think about a person's story, you've done your job. Sure, it'd be good to have some 'and why' in there, but personally, I find open ended criticisms allow for some great personal development. The characters didn't feel genuine, the ending was a let down, the setting was too unnecessarily detailed, the dialogue didn't work. You know what you like and don't like in a story and if you can pack it into a few short sentences, you can give a writer a good idea as to what they need to work on. Everyone can be a critic, and if more people chipped in their two cents, writers here could probably gauge their readership's response and work on giving them what they want. But if you can pick out particular details, that can be good too.

I also recall my creative writing lecturer telling me something of a reader's criticisms of your work. Often if they point out a problem, the actual problem began occuring much earlier. So that's a good excuse to go back and revise your own material.

I've been away for a few days, so I'm glad to see a lot of you guys up for reviewing eachother's work, and I'm glad that gum liked my MWC idea. And I'm also looking forward to this two month competition. While I'm working a little more over the next few months, I've got a lot more free time (no more uni until late Feb/early March) so I should be up for judging again.

At 11/5/09 09:30 AM, Me-Patch wrote: Isn't this the plot of some movie coming out soon? Only it's just one person not a whole race.

The Box

It looks hiarious.
"we have to save your son or your wife is gunna die"
"how's she gunna die?"
"you're going to kill her"
LMAO

In regards to this thread, I'd say au revoir to the tour de france. Races are meant to be fast.

I adore V for Vendetta. As some have pointed out, the film also EDUCATES its viewers with a HISTORY LESSON. And people are complaining? The movie was brilliant, and I have no qualms whatsoever with its association with Guy Fawkes Day, I'm more concerned with faggots donning the Guy Fawkes maks and saying "Hey look, I'm /b/!" or making some other incredibly ignorant remark about anon that makes me want to crush their face repeatedly with a sledgehammer.

Congratulations, Renae, you sexy minx!

Lynx smells like shit. My older brother used to wear it all the time until he couldn't stand the teasing from myself, my father, my mother, his girlfriend and my aunt.
Wear real deodorant if you don't feel like sickening the opposite sex.

Alcohol on occasion, for the social awkwardness.
Caffeine a couple of times, for the fatigue.
Budesonide, for the asthma.

Done me no harm so far.

At 11/2/09 01:49 AM, RapeMuffin wrote:

At 11/2/09 01:47 AM, WritersBlock wrote:

At 11/2/09 01:42 AM, RapeMuffin wrote:

At 11/2/09 01:03 AM, WritersBlock wrote: I lmao'd at that. And I like how you needed an alt to post your story in 5 parts in the contest thread. ;)

That's the fastest I've ever made a yahoo email account in my life lol.

And now I have an alt account, for my alt account. Go me.

Well, now you're prepared for the next time you'll need to quintuple post. Like the next time you leave your story until 11:59PM on the first of the next month.

You know me too well...

And I usually finish writing my stories long before the deadline, but I keep putting off my proofreading. And then I keep finding things I want to change. Then change back. Then change again. Until it's 11:59p.

I'm starting to get into the process of doing a couple of things now, to print out my work as I go along, and to read it aloud. Not necessarily in that order, but if you've got a half-written paper in your hands, you can circle what's not working and then go on your computer and fix it. Reading your work aloud can help a lot. I do it a lot when I'm revising my own work. I'll go through and go through and go through and see what sounds nice and what doesn't. Sometimes I get clunky sentences, but I'm often too lazy to do anything about it. You should see my room and my desk though, they're littered with pages upon pages of loose manuscripts of different stories in different levels of completion.

At 11/2/09 01:42 AM, RapeMuffin wrote:

At 11/2/09 01:03 AM, WritersBlock wrote: I lmao'd at that. And I like how you needed an alt to post your story in 5 parts in the contest thread. ;)

That's the fastest I've ever made a yahoo email account in my life lol.

And now I have an alt account, for my alt account. Go me.

Well, now you're prepared for the next time you'll need to quintuple post. Like the next time you leave your story until 11:59PM on the first of the next month.

At 11/2/09 12:09 AM, RapeMuffin wrote: It appears that 7 of us tried to submit our stories at exactly 11:59, so everything is a bit of a jumble.

I assume that Gum will delete our entries and we'll submit them later in order, to lessen the confusion, but for now here is a link to my story in its entirety:

Story.

Great contest, yet again! :D

I lmao'd at that. And I like how you needed an alt to post your story in 5 parts in the contest thread. ;)
A great contest, I can't wait to see how it goes.

You know, when I submit, I get the four or five empty new post forms up in advance and just copy paste my story as a whole and post post post. I find that to be the quickest way.

GOOD LUCK ALL YOU GUYS!

At 10/31/09 12:31 PM, Lost-Chances wrote: Well, I'm doing it and have been planning to do it for roughly a month. Project Plantania. I also know WritersBlock is doing it.

Hell yeah I'm doing it. In my timezone it's about a quarter past 1 in the morning. My novel, "In the Valley of the Tempest" is already under way. 300 words and counting. Almost at 1% of the target 50k.

Hooray for literary abandon!

I'm annoyed. I'm really looking forward to it, and I signed up to trial it and recieve updates for it ages ago and so far, I've had neither. I signed my email address up for it again the other day, so I hope they widen the invites soon. I see so much potential in it, and I think I'd get a lot of use out of it.

At 10/28/09 03:29 PM, TomFulp wrote: Leaving no stone unturned, we're planning an even crazier event around the production of movies. It will combine writers, artists, animators, musicians and voice actors in a structured competition that spans several phases. It's something I've been keeping tucked away in anticipation of a Writing Portal, but for now we might just have to settle for opening a Writing Forum, much like how the Art Forum prepared for the Art Portal. More on that in the coming weeks, we still have our massive summer/fall project to complete.

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! That is truly beautiful news. You know, the longer you take with the Writing Portal, the more stories I write. When it comes out, I'll have A LOT of material to share. And then I might dabble a bit in film scripts. I've been studying scriptwriting at uni for about a month now, and although I've just written a radio play for the assignment, the structure is very similar, so, you know, proper scripts, as opposed to stories should help animators out a great deal. Any animators out there, if you're ever looking for a story to work from, I'm usually keen on collaborating and coming up with a good interesting plot.

As for a writing forum, that'd be just fantastic. I know I'll have a lot of things to talk about that seem out of place in general, as the subject material often skips right over the majority of users. Any idea as to when we'll be seeing this Writing forum on the BBS?

At 10/28/09 04:15 PM, Scarab wrote: That's me in brief, before I start erupting into, "WE COULD DO THIS AND THAT!", "WE COULD HAVE PUBLISHED ANTHOLOGIES IN THE STORE AND EVERYTHING!", etc.

It's more of a reality than you think. ;)

At 10/28/09 01:15 AM, STEM wrote:

At 10/28/09 12:51 AM, FatJoe214 wrote: You think that's bad look how much people are willing to pay for a calculator. link

Couldn't have imagined getting through my grade school years without the ti-84. It's a dated calculator, but everyone I went to school with had one

Graphic Calculators are indeed worth the money with what they can do. I studied calculus in year 11 and 12 in high school. It's just so damn useful. Not to mention its uses in applicable maths (statistics, economic equations and shit), physics and chemistry. You can store notes on them too, which makes exams so much easier, not to mention you can transfer files between them via a wireless connection. It's pretty amazing, considering mine was the new HP model (can't remember the exact name of it), and it's still got a screen that reminds you of the original game boy.

At 10/27/09 10:35 PM, AlphaCentauri wrote: Honestly, at this point, I don't see anything restarting the calendar.

If anything, I'd put my money on nuclear war.

I'm guessing his parents want him to join the circus. I can't think of anywhere else you'd need to do all that shit.

also, Numa Numa @ 3:07

At 10/26/09 05:27 AM, hijackreaper wrote:

At 10/26/09 05:26 AM, WritersBlock wrote: "but police found that his blood alcohol level was 0.29, more than three times the legal limit."

Wait, where I come from, that's five times the legal limit. What are you Americans playing at? Huh?

But I must admit, that's a fucking cool chair.

Hey, they never said how much more than three times the legal limit that level was.

Semaaaantics ;D

While I would agree with you, I'd have to say that a news story will always go for the most impressive figure. More than five times/almost six times will always trump more than two or three. I think it's safe to say that it's somewhere between three and four times over the limit. Going on that, I'm guessing the laws state that the legal limit is 0.08 pr 0.09.

"but police found that his blood alcohol level was 0.29, more than three times the legal limit."

Wait, where I come from, that's five times the legal limit. What are you Americans playing at? Huh?

But I must admit, that's a fucking cool chair.

At 10/25/09 09:43 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: Now I'm allowed to say 1 week, right?

That is permitted, yes.

At 10/24/09 07:49 PM, yurgenburgen wrote:

At 10/24/09 07:40 PM, Jinx-Studios wrote: How many words can you think of that don't have ANY VOWELS.

Crwth.

It's a musical instrument.

It's a Welsh word. Which doesn't adhere to English language rules. I'm sure there are plenty of names and foreign language words that don't have any vowels, but in standard English, the only non-vowel words contain y. And two of the longest words in the English language that don't contain vowels are rhythm and syzygy. Y is just a pretend vowel.

At 10/25/09 10:29 AM, InsertFunnyUserName wrote: And Scarab.

Scarab and Timmy. Much respect to the both of them.

Every Killers song I listen to is so flamboyant and catchy, and, in the language of A Clockwork Orange, I'd have to say, on the whole, they can be quite horrorshow. But that's nothing to do with what I want to talk about.

Numbers are everywhere. They're a way of anchoring people to a tangible reference point. Reading a book? I'm *this many* pages in. Writing an essay, *this many* words. Everything I buy is in dollars and cents. The fuel in my car is managed in fractions. Just under 1/4 of the whole. On Sesame Street, they're always counting, the Count counts the number of the week, the kids grow up counting. We study maths in theory in school and the majority of us will ask what the fuck maths is good for. We count time, distance, weight, volume. People go on diets to lose *this many* kilograms or *this much* percent of my current weight. It's *this many* days until my next paycheck and *this many* hours and minutes until my next break. I pay *this many* dollars rent a fortnight, a fortnight being 14 days, which is roughly doubled if I calculate it on a monthly basis.

12 months a year, 4 seasons of three months each. Time has gone so fast. I've been through my first year of university, which is 1/3 of the length of my course. Each year is split into two semesters and each semester is split into 4 units, each worth a set amount of points (usually 25 or 50, depending on whether it's a "core" or "elective").

The point of this is, we're all bound by numbers. Our goals are often defined by numbers, or at least largely restricted by it. Are these numbers too restrictive? Are they holding us back from cutting loose and running wild into the great expanse of the (mathematically speaking) "undefined"? Or do these numbers give us a solid base in which to build our lives upon?

I used to love maths. I used to enjoy the pure logic of it. Now I'm fascinated with the flexibility of the English language. I guess, for me, personally, I've found that the numbers have always been there to help me, rather than hinder, but the world seemed to hold itself together back when "going to the shops" meant trading a cow for a pocket full of beans. Some people don't get maths, some do.

I guess this is another of my "here's my thoughts" threads that people read and then either don't understand or don't know how to respond. I don't care that much really, for me it's about sharing my insight, however roundabout it may seem.