At 2/5/10 12:56 AM, Nateofwar wrote:

At 2/4/10 11:41 PM, Version2 wrote: I've been thinking about this a little today. Even after the lit portal goes up, I'm sure that most people will want an editor, or at the very least an extra set of eyes, to look over their piece before they post it. Maybe it would be beneficial to have volunteer editors?

I'm about something were 2 people will get together, exchange their stories/poems/whatever, and each person can look over the other guys work, giving him notes, pointing out grammar errors and typos to be fixed. Pretty much a "you do mine, I'll do yours" type deal.

I'm up for it if anyone else is. If enough people are interested, I could start a thread.

It's a good premise but if somone made a certain mistake in there work then there probably going to be more likely to not catch that mistake in your paper. It also brings up the question: If your good enough to proofread somone elses paper why not just do your owm?

I think being unable to proof read your own work comes from the fact that you have (hopefully) read it so many times that you know what you mean to say, regardless of what is actually there. The mind is an amazing thing! -- auto-correct.

Then again, if you really are going to be anal about perfection then hold onto it for a few weeks. Look at it every few days and each time a new perspective will be had. There comes a point in time where you are going to look at your work ojectively regardless of how attached to the words you have become.

At 2/5/10 12:56 AM, Nateofwar wrote:
It's a good premise but if somone made a certain mistake in there work then there probably going to be more likely to not catch that mistake in your paper. It also brings up the question: If your good enough to proofread somone elses paper why not just do your owm?

Because I'm biased towards my own work. And also because if I write something, I'm already familiar with it. If somebody else reads it, they are coming into it fresh, with no prior knowledge of what the story is. They are in a much better position to tell me whether or not what I wrote works.

PST HEY GUYS.... Have a drama class and an "origional" monologue to preform? Well come plagurise this shit right here!

its good i got an A+ for it.

From my rather limited understanding of copyright law: My understanding has been the author is considered to have proper rights over the work unless it can be proven the rights were transfered. IE, if I post something here on NG, and I can clearly prove I am the author of the work if challenged, I would be considered the copyright holder. Now if Tom Fulp could prove I sold him my interest in said story, or that the work was a "work for hire" (material done to Tom's specifications rather then original story and content brought to him) Tom is copyright holder. I'm sure it gets a little more complex then that but the nice thing about changes to copyright law over time is that it was done to hopefully make it easier for authors and their families to recover and profit from their creative endeavors.

Because let's face it, you never know what you have until it's published. Superman is one of the greatest pieces of American fiction ever created, it's made BILLIONS, but his creators sold that initial comic strip for about 130 dollars 1938 money.

At 2/5/10 02:31 AM, aviewaskewed wrote: Because let's face it, you never know what you have until it's published. Superman is one of the greatest pieces of American fiction ever created, it's made BILLIONS, but his creators sold that initial comic strip for about 130 dollars 1938 money.

And for those that don't want to think back that far, Fox let George Lucas control the merchandising for the Star Wars franchise. He's got copyright on the merchandise, but Fox still have the copyright on the films, since they were made for them.

Mind you, in the upper end of these sort of deals, we get shrouded in red tape and so forth.

In conclusion, if you're posting your own work, such as stories and the like, it might be better to keep a copy backed up on a CD or Flash Drive somewhere away from your computer, so that you've

a) got protection from fire, natural disaster etc

b) can show that the file was created on the [date] and hasn't been edited since.

Well, time to go back to short stories.

Subject of dee day: P.E. (Physical Education)*

Conrad panted heavily. His P.E. teacher treated the class like slaves. They did countless jogs, did a few hundred push-ups, thousands of sit-ups and a few long jumps. But not in a day...NO. This was spread into a total of 3 days a week. They had a 5 seconds break during P.E. of course.

It was only the second day and Conrad still had not recovered from his first and his hips were aching. Sweat came down like rain. He couldn't even move his jaws. His arms were limped and his legs trudged wearily on the floor. Looking upon the stairs ahead, he groaned. It was only 1 flight of stairs but the first step up felt like hell. And thus the 'journey' began.

He wanted to get this over and done with. So he hurriedly pulled himself up, legs knocking at the hind. Gasping for air, his arms wavered like jelly. Getting to the top, he almost flopped onto the floor. His heart was beating rapidly and black dots dancing between his eyes. Rubbing them, he tried crawling to the classroom but ended up scraping his knees. Breathing real quickly, he lay sprawled on the floor and slowly shut his eyes, never opening them again.

It was then found out that the P.E. teacher supported the Nazis a lot. And he was a mental jail-warden.

*This is BASED on a true story (moi)....ok, not EVERYTHING is good-to-honest...

And thus Conrad's fat ass was doomed to sit in a hover-round, surfing Walmarts for all eternity. Couldn't even take a day of exercise? Damn, that foo is WEAK, son!

Flash Cam, your story was alright. Some work was put into it, I can tell.

But that's not a short story. A short story would be 1000, 2000 words at a bare minimum. What you have there could be labeled a blurb or an "extremely short" story. A good story should take more than one sitting to write. A good story should of course last as long as it takes to tell the story, but there's an accepted minimum before it just becomes bad.

So think of a story that could fill a few pages in a text document, and keep knocking away at it until you have even a short story. What I like to do in Word is bump the text up to size 18, so it's the same size as in a book. What was five pages is now the length of a chapter in Mutiny on the Bounty. :-P

-~RWT~-

At 2/5/10 01:03 PM, RWT wrote:

But that's not a short story. A short story would be 1000, 2000 words at a bare minimum.

-~RWT~-

In regards to this I was searching around awhile ago to see how long something had to be to count as a novel and...
Short Story: 1,000 - 15,000
Novelette: 15,000 - 25,000
Novella: 25,000 - 50,000
Novel (short) 50,000 -70,000
Novel (long) 70,000 - 100,000
Novel (epic) 100,000 - 120,000
Novel (saga) over 120,000

Now, I can't remember, I only copy/pasted that data for personal reference. Hope it helps in a way.

Also, RWT, not all books have font size 18. Some have some pretty small font sizes, for example "A Game of Thrones".

Wow, this place is amazing! THis is probably the only place where I can feel free to express myself and people will actually tak it seriously. I wish I had found this forum sooner!

At 2/5/10 01:03 PM, RWT wrote: Flash Cam, your story was alright. Some work was put into it, I can tell.

But that's not a short story. A short story would be 1000, 2000 words at a bare minimum. What you have there could be labeled a blurb or an "extremely short" story.

I don't really define a short story by length, despite the term "short story". I just think about it in terms of content. A short story, to me, would be composed of basically only sentences that push the story forward, whether through moving the plot forward or through character or situation development. So the story's length is based solely on plot, without unnecessary details (but daaaamn I love those).

A good story should take more than one sitting to write. A good story should of course last as long as it takes to tell the story, but there's an accepted minimum before it just becomes bad.

Very true, story's are always evolving. They never start perfectly on the first draft. They must be given time to enhance whatever it may be that must be enhanced. We're not young children here, we write like we mean it.

At 2/5/10 06:08 PM, sinfulwolf wrote: Also, RWT, not all books have font size 18. Some have some pretty small font sizes, for example "A Game of Thrones".

"House of Spirits" by Isabel Allende has tiny font. It made 11pm reading difficult. :I

Anyways, I was surprised to see how short many people here were making their chapters. Now, that's not inherently a bad thing (though it often goes hand-in-hand with people not putting in enough detail) when you take into consideration authors like Dan Brown whose chapters are sometimes only 600 words long. But it's just an observation that I made about writing style. People have each individual scene in separate chapters instead of putting a number of related scenes in the same chapter. I mean, I figured that my chapters at an average of 3500 to 4000 words ran on the short side, lol.

At 2/5/10 06:08 PM, sinfulwolf wrote: Short Story: 1,000 - 15,000
Novelette: 15,000 - 25,000
Novella: 25,000 - 50,000
Novel (short) 50,000 -70,000
Novel (long) 70,000 - 100,000
Novel (epic) 100,000 - 120,000
Novel (saga) over 120,000

Under 300 words would be flash fiction. You can find 3 examples of such in my sig :)

At 2/5/10 07:14 PM, Deathcon7 wrote: Under 300 words would be flash fiction. You can find 3 examples of such in my sig :)

Flash fiction can be really fun. I read a cool little story on here a little while ago describing some sort of ritual thing. Although it had some problems with not being specific enough, it was a good example of how, if he made a few minor word choice changes to clarify his writing, an author can create a powerful and vivid story in only a couple hundred words. I think the key to it (and I'm not talking about your writing because you seem to do a good job with this) is to not try and cram too much into a small space. The story I mentioned was a good example of this as the author only described one small scene. It was small, but powerful.

Anyone know of any free word editors? All I have on this laptop are notepad and wordpad. Neither one gives a word count, lol.

At 2/5/10 07:53 PM, Version2 wrote: Anyone know of any free word editors? All I have on this laptop are notepad and wordpad. Neither one gives a word count, lol.

Go get a trial for Word 2007?

Nevermind, now I remember....

http://www.openoffice.org/

Thanks man :)

Hello, fellow writers! Since I just posted my flagship story, I figured I'd introduce myself here. I've been writing actively since about the third grade (am in college now), and it is one of my favorite pastimes. Depending on the feedback I get from my first post, I might share some more of my stuff on here in the future. I Look forward to talking with you all!

Well....Time for my next one...

Subject of da day: Farts*

Dan gave out a large, gaseous fart. Grinning, he watched the people choke. Sauntering to the exit, he covered his mouth slowly as the gas reached his nostrils. He had a knack for powerful farts and he had even made a little graph to compare with.

He glanced below the 3rd mark. His fart was not certainly 1, the oldies fart, nor 2, the common fart. The third mark was usually a pretty strong fart he usually did but for this, he slashed a mark using his pencil at the 4th mark. It was his 5th 4 Grade so far.

At school, Dan was nicknamed quickly 'Gastronaut' once he gave out a 3 1/2 Grade. He slowly looked down at the last and final mark, Grade 5. He only did one so far after he finished baked beans, broccoli and a lot of chips. That kind of fart was like a fully-charged Wario fart, an atomic bomb.

Dan looked up after hearing someone yelling his name. It was his good ole friend Marc. Smiling, Dan knew he had to do his business again. Taking out a glass jar, he farted a 3 Grade in it and hastily closed it. He ran a little business of giving farts-in-a-jar, great for ruining siblings slumber parties. Passing the jar to Marc, he collected the money and walked off, wondering if he should start a company.

*I based it on a story I read so some of the crdit goes to it if you like this story soooooo much...

I propose that all trolls receive a ban for posting a topic like this: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1143 315

At 2/5/10 09:35 PM, TrevorW wrote: I propose that all trolls receive a ban for posting a topic like this: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1143 315

I second this motion.

At 2/5/10 09:45 PM, InsertFunnyUserName wrote:

At 2/5/10 09:35 PM, TrevorW wrote: I propose that all trolls receive a ban for posting a topic like this: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1143 315

I second this motion.

I suddenly don't feel so bad for yelling at him.

-~RWT~-

At 2/5/10 09:35 PM, TrevorW wrote: I propose that all trolls receive a ban for posting a topic like this: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1143 315

Agreed. I believe this is a place for people actually serious about writing. If you want to spend five minutes thinking of something, post it in the general forums where it belongs, or better yet don't post it at all. Nobody wants a trollfish swimming against our current.

I admit that I can be a jerk at times. The difference? I realize it and try not to do it again. Everyone trolls a little.

I saw zbox post in the hiaku thread. I so badly wanted to post this:

go fuck off z-box
you are an annoying troll
see ya, bye, piss off.

But I'm not going to start drama in otto's topic, Otto's good people.

Could someone please comment on this poem...it's in my topic but no one has.
I really went out of my box here and I think it turned out well. What do you all think?

It's interesting, I don't think I've seen poetry like that before. The way it's structured is awesome, it's like you're trying to sneak words in, instead of placing them directly, I like it.

At 2/5/10 10:18 PM, Version2 wrote: It's interesting, I don't think I've seen poetry like that before. The way it's structured is awesome, it's like you're trying to sneak words in, instead of placing them directly, I like it.

Glad to see that the flow and "sneaking" worked! I sorta-kinda stole this style from e e Cummings, but I used my own twist (I think).

I was thinking about writing up a thread to help those who want to pursue writing in their careers. It's about advertising( as that is one of the many jobs that involve writing). It would include writing a skit to advertise a given product that I've yet to decide upon. I think I might turn it into a small contest but first I would like to know if such a thread would be worth my writing in the first place.

It would need to be in a play fashion, as in:

You: words
Me: more words
[setting/ important movement by the characters/anything else that's not dialogue]

Like that, and it would need to be able to persuade the audience, as best it can, to buy a product I would choose for them to advertise to see how well they can do at advertising.

I think it would help those who want to do this as a career to get some critiques and over all practice on such things. I think it might be fun but I also think barely anyone would participate if I took the time and effort to do this. So would you?

At 2/5/10 11:24 PM, HollowedPumkinz wrote: I was thinking about writing up a thread to help those who want to pursue writing in their careers. It's about advertising( as that is one of the many jobs that involve writing). It would include writing a skit to advertise a given product that I've yet to decide upon. I think I might turn it into a small contest but first I would like to know if such a thread would be worth my writing in the first place.

It would need to be in a play fashion, as in:

You: words
Me: more words
[setting/ important movement by the characters/anything else that's not dialogue]

Like that, and it would need to be able to persuade the audience, as best it can, to buy a product I would choose for them to advertise to see how well they can do at advertising.

I think it would help those who want to do this as a career to get some critiques and over all practice on such things. I think it might be fun but I also think barely anyone would participate if I took the time and effort to do this. So would you?

I would take part in this but prolly only if you chose somthing realy good to advertise. If you chose somthing unorthadox it would be more apealing. Also you might have a problem with people posting stupid comercials.

stupid scripts are bad but not all bad scripts are stupid