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[inteuniso]

I present to you all, a poem!

Something interesting about this poem: I closed my eyes when I typed it. I just let my hands remember where the keys were and I typed. Only misspelled two words, which I went back and fixed.

Spoiler: Seasons (click to show/hide)

Must we keep hurting
Must we keep suffering
Putting ourselves through this charade?

I want you to be happy
I want you to smile
For yourself

Mirrors aren't so bad, you know
They have a way of showing what is
Not what was

Maybe it's time
I stop blaming you
And start helping

Maybe I should
Just lay a while
Here, the two of us.

I dunno, maybe
We're just two fools on this great ocean
The summer seems so far away

Winter so bitter
Everyone so cold
Ain't no fire but the two of us

This bitter cold
Bites my bones, and tears my mind
Waiting for the next offensive

Much like I wait for you
Your winter has been a lot longer,
I have begun my thaw.

When I am out in summer,
Will you join me?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Wow, I enjoyed that poem alot, simple but powerful I think.

I can't give much advice, but I loved it, lets see another!

[Caz]

Figured out a method that drastically increases my pleasure in editing. Modifying words on a screen will not cut it. You have to print it onto paper, with large margins, and take a pen to it. Print single-sided so you can make additions to the text without losing them. To me I find this so much more effective than messing around with document files where you could accidently make the piece worse with poor editing. Adding stuff to a hard copy and then using it as a guide to modify the final file just takes the anxiety away.

And editing reams of paper on the floor while your dog tries to sit on them with muddy paws is just fun.

[Willfor]

Whatever makes you enjoy editing is the best way to edit. It looks like you've found yours, a truly excellent experience to have. Congrats!

[Caz]

Whatever makes you enjoy editing is the best way to edit. It looks like you've found yours, a truly excellent experience to have. Congrats!

Thanks. Maybe I'll actually be able to post my book for you guys to read one day. 

[Leatra]

Hey, what do you guys think about using the enneagram personality system for creating characters? I came across this idea in a website where it was pointed out that this system could be used for creating believable characters. Most people seem to agree. While it seems like a good idea to use for building a chassis for a character, it kinda seems a little limiting. A character can be a mix of more than one of these personalities, rather than fully becoming one of them.

[fqllve]

I used to use stuff like the enneagram and astrology to come up with characters, but what I found was that it left me with a whole bunch of disparate personality traits with no real way to unify them into a coherent whole. And if I did manage to create a real character out of them it rarely seemed to be the kind of character I needed for the story I wanted to tell. And yeah, like you said, I think the most interesting thing about characters is when they embody paradoxes and contradictions which creates conflict and curiosity in the reader. There's no real way to do that sticking just with that method.

Generally these days I just build characters around traits and actions that are either going to a) move the story in the direction I'd like to take it, or b) reflect on the character's previous or subsequent actions in a new and unexpected light, with a lot of little minor character development for flavor. However, it was about ten years ago that I last tried using the enneagram and astrology methods and I was not a very skilled writer at that point. With a little ability and a lot of modification, such methods might be perfectly serviceable. I feel like they'd still be more effort than they're worth though.

[Reudh]

I just choose a character trait i find funny and flesh it from there.

[WillowLuman]

Haven't checked in a while, but I suddenly found I had typed a poem, figured I might as well hold it up to criticism:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just another day, drifting through our lives
Time and space and things
Passing by our eyes.
And I sit and think
What it's all about
Why we do these things
Day in, day out.

As I sit and watch the people pass,
And talk and drink,
And eat and laugh
And rest a while before next class.
We do not see
How long it lasts
As our future drains
Into the past.

And such grey is every day
from when we first wake
to when we decay.
A final sleep, go all we must
when we return
into the dust.

And so I sit and wonder why
we all live and we all die.
I doubt there even
Is a why.
A mere accident
That we're all alive
And when we're gone
The universe does not know
and it does not care
That we were ever there.

But, still, here we are
drifting through our lives
The only thing to do
is be happy with the times
that we have
While we're still here
From day to day
And year to year.

So long as we have our memories
We can all trust
That to us at least
We're all more than dust.

[Doomblade187]

Well, I did a writing prompt from Writing Excuses, and I liked it enough to post it here for critique, unlike the previous one.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Surrounded by the shadows of life. Just enough to hold the bodies together, to move them, to give them life. A greater source of life, full life somewhere out front. The feel of old, cracked leather in hand, the aged straps of a shield on the other arm. Scraps of old armor hanging on the frame.

Step.

He looked about- he was surrounded by many like him, shades brought back from the veil to fight one more time, for the whim of their master.

Master.

They loved master. They loved master for giving them a taste of life, that estatic feeling that, even though a shadow, was more than enough to fight for. A scrap of a feeling so precious that it was more priceless than the stones ringing a king's crown.
King.

The enemy. The leader of the other side, so eager to take this shade of life from them. Barely visible in their keep, the bright stars of their life shining in the distance, nobody in from of him to obscure his view.
The view.

The world around him was eerie and full of the dimly glowing shapes of his brothers-in-arms, the occasional fleeing brighter spark of light of an animal in the bright forests to their sides. The grey stones of the keep in the distance stark contrasts to the glow given off by the defenders on the wall.

Creeping ever closer, they marched, stopping for nothing. A fireball careened into the rows behind him, his comrades screaming silently in anger at their release from their temporary bodies.

The noise.

The quiet rushing of souls flowing over temporary bodies, the almost imperceptable hum of the world at large, the clamor of life from the now-close village and keep. The hum of a wave of arrows striking into the front line, one lodging between empty ribs. It tickled.

The people.

The wide-eyed defenders of the keep as the army battered down the door. The screams of pain and terror as they crashed into the keep, defenders falling like wheat before the scythe. The line of resolute soldiers forming in front of your army.

The charge.

Bony feet pounding soft earth, thin hands holding old weapons with unnatural strength. The battle with those stars of life in front of him. The crash of an axe into his temporary skull.

The rage.

The silent cry of anger at the loss of his body, at the fear of going back to his previous existance as a shade of a ghost, wandering the land.

The freedom as he flew high and free of the material plane, free at last.

Joyous.

The prompt was to write a scene from the perspective of a front-line soldier in an undead army.

[WillowLuman]

You know, I never really considered them as feeling anything before or having any awareness, but if reanimated minions did feel anything, that surely would be what they felt.

[Xantalos]

Wow. Nice.
Also, I really need to get writing again, since I haven't in a year or two. FAR TOO LONG, I SAY!

[WillowLuman]

So, er, how's my poem?

[Xantalos]

I'm not good at the whole technical bit, but the message is good, and I know a lot of people who would feel a ... what do they call it? Connection; to the poem.
Overall not bad.
[/notreallygoodcriticism]

[Doomblade187]

I'm not good at the whole technical bit, but the message is good, and I know a lot of people who would feel a ... what do they call it? Connection; to the poem.
Overall not bad.
[/notreallygoodcriticism]

I agree with Xantalos here- I like it personally.

And I'm not very good at criticism.