Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
Squarebarb:
There were some of us including GOPpoet who were thinking of starting a writer's thread here on FR. There's a horse thread, a football thread, a Hobbit Hole thread, so why not a thread for us writers?
And mainly sticking to fiction otherwise the discussion tends toward politicsa iinstead of the craft of writing.
Okay Eleutheria5, YOU start the thread."
Eleutheria5:
On it. Could use some help from someone who knows how to do HTTP and other techy stuff, though. Tried to learn, but drat that right hemisphere dominance we creative folks have. I've actually been running a board on the aol writers' club since 1996 called Conservative Writers' Club. Mostly it simply fights flame wars with liberal writers, though, and all the conservative contributors, including me, burn out. It'd be great to get away from that and just swap ideas with people who DON'T wish every one of us a flaming death.
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
The obtuse are always plagued by the obdurant.
“...since it was Detroit he deftly snicked the six-speed shift lever down two gears, slammed his right foot hard against the floorboard and madly headed for the bright lights of the nearest Baskin Robbins...”
That would be an excellent question to have the answer to. Can it still be legally protected if its posted online? A lot of media outlets seem to think so. I would love to post the answer at my new site too, so I can always say I warned them.
Back in 1966 I got hung out to dry in a Blue Book grading review as I went on and on about the drabness of the character’s brown study, even to suggest that she might have been lifted from her melancholy by a simple coat of whitewash on the walls...
There you are — tell us in the horse’s words what it means to him to be fed on time and all his needs met...
Reread the first two chapters of Grisham’s latest book for a marvelous picture being painted in a sinister and foreboding way.
I'm obtuse as to why I'm now plagued by you. Who rattled your cage?
I was lucky to escape from Raintree County with my sanity; I sneaked out the time portal when one of the many flashbacks ran headlong into a flashforward.
Doppelganger?
I’ll bet you enjoyed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
“It is spring and the air is warm but contains the promise of the desert. Soon, the skies will remain redunant blue with no clouds to shield the rays of the sun. Moisture in any form, dew or rain, will be a forgotten memory by May, well, not unless you count the sweat on my brow. Then Tel Aviv will be awashed in moisture!”
Quit before you rot your underwear.
If you’re going to tell the soldier’s story, you’ve got to wear his bloody shirt; and when you leave him on the ground you must linger long enough to consecrate his journey.
You must try and capture the flames as they writhe and rise and trap the smoke before it escapes the light.
Back in the days of transom drops the unpublished author was both a pest and a welcome guest for the harried editor; nothing new is found in an old shoe.
Piqued, I Googled this (civilwar.com/jackbio):
” Next to Robert E. Lee himself, Thomas J. Jackson is the most revered of all Confederate commanders. A graduate of West Point (1846), he had served in the artillery in the Mexican War, earning two brevets, before resigning to accept a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute. Thought strange by the cadets, he earned “Tom Fool Jackson” and “Old Blue Light” as nicknames.
Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he was commissioned a colonel in the Virginia forces and dispatched to Harpers Ferry where he was active in organizing the raw recruits until relieved by Joe Johnston. His later assignments included: commanding lst Brigade, Army of the Shenandoah (May - July 20, 1861); brigadier general, CSA June 17, 1861); commanding 1st Brigade, 2nd Corps, Army of the Potomac July 20 - October 1861); major general, CSA (October 7, 1861); commanding Valley District, Department of Northern Virginia (November 4, 1861 - June 26, 1862); commanding 2nd Corps, Army of Northern Virginia June 26, 1862-May 2, 1863); and lieutenant general, CSA (October 10, 1862).
Leaving Harpers Ferry, his brigade moved with Johnston to join Beauregard at Manassas. In the fight at 1st Bull Run they were so distinguished that both the brigade and its commander were dubbed “Stonewall” by General Barnard Bee. (However, Bee may have been complaining that Jackson was not coming to his support). The 1st Brigade was the only Confederate brigade to have its nickname become its official designation. That fall Jackson was given command of the Valley with a promotion to major general.”
And here is yours:
“Jackson had many nicknames: Old Jack, Old Blue Light, given to him by the men because of the intensity of his blue gray eyes before battle, or the ever popular Stonewall. Before the war began his students at the Virginia Military Institute called him Tom Fool, but never to his face. For ten years he taught both Natural and Experimental Philosophy and the Arts and Sciences of War at the West Point of the South. He was unpopular with the students for he was a rigid and humorless man. His lectures were wooden and excruciatingly dull — to be endured rather than enjoyed. His strict sense of right and wrong only complicated the relationship with his young charges. When faced with a disobedient student, he was inflexible and harsh in his punishments. Rules were rules and duty was duty. Major Jackson, as the town of Lexington at the upper end of the Shenandoah Valley knew him, was noted and teased more for his eccentricities than for any military brilliance.
Jackson was born on January 21, 1824, in the western portion of Virginia that had remained faithful to the Union at the start of the war and was even now in the process of forming a new state. Orphaned at the age of seven, he lived with his Uncle Cummins at Jackson Mill, a grist mill situated at the mergence of Freeman’s Creek into the West Fork River. Uncle Cummins proved to be a carefree guardian whose sense of right and wrong was the polar opposite of his nephew.
Young Tom managed the best he could with no strict rules to follow and no male role model to emulate. He went to school when there was a teacher willing to endure the unruly children of the neighboring communities but mostly he taught himself. He was good at math and realized early that education was the key to a better life. Jackson aimed to go to West Point, the prestigious military academy on the Hudson River in New York.
Candidates for West Point were nominated by the Secretary of War on the recommendation of members of Congress. Jackson made his application to his representative but Congressman Hays chose another deserving candidate. It did not take that candidate long to discover West Point was not the ideal place for his talents. When Jackson learned that his competitor was home with no plans to return to the academy, he wasted very little time. Hurrying through town he collected a series of personal endorsements from local dignitaries and leaders. He rushed to Washington City and argued his case before Hays who immediately took him to see the Secretary of War. Disarmed by Jackson’s initiative and persuasiveness, the Secretary gave him the spot.
Never was a student so ill-prepared for the academic rigors of West Point. He barely passed the entrance exam and began his career among the “Immortals,” those students confined to the bottom of the class rankings. When he stood at the chalkboard agonizing to solve the difficult mathematical equations, he erased and erased his work so often his gray uniform was turned white with chalk dust, while rivers of sweat poured down his face.
Among his school books he carried a small notebook filled with personal maxims. The one he lived by was simple. “You can be whatever you resolve to be.” He resolved to be an excellent student.
Never going on to the next lesson without understanding the preceding one, at night he would pile coal high in the fire place and lying prone before the grate would study well into the early morning while his roommates snored beside him. His progress was amazing. Upon graduation, he ranked seventeenth out of fifty-nine students in the class of 1846, a class historians have called the greatest ever graduated from the academy. His peers commented that if West Point was a five year program instead of four, Cadet Jackson would have graduated first in his class.”
Note how yours focuses on his youth while the former begins with a meaty description of a strong grown man; brief and business-like we march with him through his career and are primed to follow what lay before him, us and history itself.
Don’t blame me, blame my tagline...
Yours, I assume?
What did poor Margaret do?
Did Sim abandon the dangerous steed?
Was there a witness to the scene?
Or do we build the house we are now destined to explore?
I thought it was tight and dramatic; this Sim is a guy worth watching.
What is clever here is that this episode could be used as an opening paragraph or it could be inserted anywhere in the work; even as an ending, whetting our appetites for more.
Ther incident occurs in the middle of a novel I wrote. Margaret possessed a document leading to people whom Mossad, a pharmaceutical company Veep, and a science magazine reproter/writer are keen to find. The document was ‘seeded’ with her as a means to a very deep secret being revealed. Margaret’s title is Head of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropoly at The University of Alabama.
It was sort of all right, to me it made an effort to seem very deep and then it wasn’t very deep. As I remember he ended up with the solution of life being something about ‘quality’.
How come this thread started up again? It’s like a year old already. Strange.But good.
wow. You sound like a good teacher.
I have just started a conservative, pro-freedom, fiction site for writers to learn from each other, give advice and critiques. I started it last night and we have 8 members and I was hoping for more FReepers to tell you the truth.
Only members can see the Storyboard section.
Is there a Righters’ Club ping list by any chance? I would love to be added to it.
its libertyfic.proboards.com if anyone is interested.
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