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[Willfor]

Brandon Sanderson, the guy who not only is finishing the Wheel of Time series, but is also writing a number of expansive series of his own... This guy also teaches the Creative Writing elective at BYU. His lectures for this course are being put online this term.

Even if you're not a fan of his works, this is a man who knows how to teach writing. He knows how to teach writing because he's talked to a lot of writers who use different methods, and he's fully willing to concede that different writers write differently. What he focuses on is that writing is a skill that must be practiced, and he wants you to build up this skill. His interest in teaching is equipping writers with different tools that may or may not work for them.

Right now only the first lecture is up, and since I've followed a lot of his youtube videos and Writing Excuses I already know a number of these things. However, I'm still looking forward to when all of these are online because there's a lot to learn from them, in my opinion.

[Ehndras]

Did this die? o_O

CPR!

[AlStar]

Well, to keep the thread going, I guess I'll post the next bit of the story that I posted in the other writing thread here:

It seemed to go over not-horribly, and really - what more can one ask?

This post is about the same size as the last one (roughly 900 words.) As before, all comments, criticisms and error corrections are welcome - you guys gave me some great feedback on the last one.

Pleas for me to never post more of this story to these forums will also be listened to and their merit weighed. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Disoriented, Max rose from his bed, making a wobbling course towards the bathroom. The stink of the cave seemed to still fill his nose, and upon reaching the sink he heaved and retched. His mother appeared in the doorway “Max! Oh, my poor baby! I’m sorry that I yelled at you, why don’t you take today off school and rest up – you look like something the dog dragged in.” She paused, “I’ve got to go to work, but you know that my number is right next to the phone downstairs if there’s an emergency. Have lots of liquids, and don’t eat anything too rich. I’ll be back around five.”  She disappeared, and the sounds of footfalls on the stairs, creek then thump of the door and muted roar of a car warming up and backing out of the driveway sounded in Max’s ears.

Max slumped to the floor, resting his forehead against the cool tile to try and stop the room from spinning. He groaned pitifully, and then managed to pull himself up and look blearily into the mirror. The face that looked back at him was that of a boy who was still in the process of becoming a man. Freckles dusted his cheeks, and dark red hair hung low over his grey eyes. His skin had a greenish pallor, and dark rings hung under his eyes. He felt like he hadn’t gotten even a minute of sleep, and the inside of his head was just one powerful pounding beat of pain. Max poured himself a glass of water from the sink, sipping it slowly while mentally willing the headache to dissipate.

He crawled back into bed, silently grateful that he wouldn’t have to go to school, but he was feeling too bad to feel good about it. His head hit the pillow, and almost immediately he was back asleep.

The bridge of the Gibraltar was simply oozing with tension. On the main screen, it was easy to see the troop transports making their way down into the atmosphere of the planet below. Those troops would mean an end to freedom for the millions of citizens below, but the Gibraltar was locked in place by red tape. Their orders were explicit: “The Gibraltar will wait at the assigned meeting point to rendezvous with the Hellion and the Utopia, at which point Gibraltar will be under the command of General Taylor.” Taylor was the shining jewel of the Republic’s space forces. From the bridge of his battleship, the Utopia, the most advanced ship the Republic had ever constructed, he had been victorious in almost a dozen campaigns against the vicious forces of the Thrall Hegemony.

Except that neither Taylor nor the Utopia was at the rendezvous where the Gibraltar had sat for nearly six hours now, watching the Hegemony troop transports make their way towards the defenseless Republic world. Right now, they were large, slow, and poorly defended. However, when they arrived the ships would drop off thousands of elite heavily armed troops, and then the ships themselves would transform into massive fortresses, bristling with massive anti-air cannon, ready to swat down any Republic ship that dared enter the planet’s airspace. The Republic, its military already overtaxed and undermanned, would be forced to concede the planet.

Max was a mere Lieutenant Commander, barely out of the academy, and didn’t have the kind of political clout needed to ignore orders that came directly from the top. If he disobeyed orders, it was likely that he’d never command a ship again. But at the same time, he couldn’t let this planet be lost while he just sat there.

“Helm: prepare for full speed on my mark; tactical: power up weapons – aim for their engines, they’re close enough to the planet that if we just disable them, they’ll probably fall into the planet’s gravity well and crash on the surface; let’s see those defensive screens and countermeasures at 100% people – we’re going to be badly outnumbered, and even if those are just transports, they’ve still got some weapons to stop people from doing exactly what we’re about to do… Mark!”

The Gibraltar burst out from its hiding place behind a small moon and dove in on the transports. Surprise was total; after so many hours without enemy contact, the ships had gone off of battle alert, and many were preparing for their final approach into the atmosphere. Beams of light and mass-accelerated particles shone from the stubby turrets long the hull of the Gibraltar, while missiles launching from their bays could be felt by the rattling shake that came up through the deck. Max’s eye shone as the effects on the transports was immediately apparent – their engines exploded, debris pin wheeling off into the dark. One transport was more unlucky then most; a missile managed to impact just so, penetrating the engine block and veering into the fuel tank before it exploded. The entire ship cracked into half a dozen large pieces, belching air, fire and men into space.

[Spinal_Taper]

I wrote a TF2 fanfic (On Youtube) and this is an excerpt from it (Slightly edited). Tell me what you think.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He pulled the pin on his chest, untouched for so long, but eerily familiar. Gripping it he held it into the air. "PA-POW!" Their Sniper saw it from the balcony. He left the team, back to the wilds, never to return. Their Scout survived, but he too left, never to return. He went back to Boston, and became a baseball player, some say.. Spy, no one knows, was he using his Dead Ringer? Was he vaporized with the rest? I don't know, I don't care, All I know is that I witnessed all of it.

[3]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Disoriented, Max rose from his bed, making a wobbling course towards the bathroom. The stink of the cave seemed to still fill his nose, and upon reaching the sink he heaved and retched. His mother appeared in the doorway “Max! Oh, my poor baby! I’m sorry that I yelled at you, why don’t you take today off school and rest up – you look like something the dog dragged in.” She paused, “I’ve got to go to work, but you know that my number is right next to the phone downstairs if there’s an emergency. Have lots of liquids, and don’t eat anything too rich. I’ll be back around five.”  She disappeared, and the sounds of footfalls on the stairs, creek then thump of the door and muted roar of a car warming up and backing out of the driveway sounded in Max’s ears.

I know it's intentional, but the mother's monologue is way too compressed for me. How else could I put it... how about: the entire paragraph is in some weird midpoint between being very specific and very nonspecific and it just doesn't flow well as a result. Either it needs to be more spaced and slower, or less detailed and faster. I suppose it's really a matter of how much of the "real world" you want to interpose between the "dream" segments: Do you want to make the contrasts of the situations subtle now and obvious later, or obvious now and (presumably) hurry along to more complex interaction between the two? Right now I can't help thinking it's neither here nor there.

The rest of it I like.

[Cthulhu]

An idea for a possible SCP popped into my head and this seems like a decent place to put the idea out and see if anyone thinks it has enough potential to put more detailed work into.

So, there's a type of lancet that spends part of its life cycle inside cows.  To get to a host, they float around in water until ingested by an insect, and then they take over the insect's brain and cause it to climb up onto stalks of grass, eventually eaten by cows, where the life cycle continues.

The SCP is a bottle of small "pills" (the bottle could be a pill bottle, tic tacs, mints, whatever).  It's not made of what it should be, instead it's some kind of mutable organic compound, as are the pills themselves.  If you eat one, the material migrates to your brain and starts growing into it, eventually taking over motor functions.  Then you attempt to climb a nearby tall object like a radio tower or high tension power line, at which point an "antenna" of the pill material sprouts out of your skull and begins casting a tight beam radio signal directed at an arbitrary (It'll be [DATA EXPUNGED]) point in the sky.  You stay there until you die of thirst or exposure, and the signal stops transmitting after you're dead.

It's some kind of alien parasite dispenser, maybe the aliens launched them all over hoping one would land on an inhabited planet and start broadcasting the location, so the aliens could do whatever it is they do.

Maybe with some tweaks it could have some of that body horror people like, parasites and brain-eating, plus the fear of the unknown, because you don't know who it's signaling or what they want

[Ehndras]

I still don't get what SCP is supposed to be. All I've seen from reading some SCP stories are crappy attempts at horror stories with twisted endings. Is there a particular point to it? Most of them just seem boring, badly-written, and rely too much on fear triggers that don't seem to work on me.

I'll take Lovecraft over that anyday.

[Cthulhu]

Some of them are really good but there's quite a few dumb ones.  The Original is dumb as hell and I'm pretty sure it only exists because it was the first one, it's identical to the Dumb Not Scary Angels from Doctor Who.

[Caz]

___/First Prompt\___

Write a short story of two adventurers questing into a dungeon to find the fabled Orb of Zot.

PR85 I will critique your other story when I have the time.

Also:Thanks for the offer Orangebottle!

I realise this is kinda late, but I did it anyway :< plz feedback and don't ask what I was smoking.

snip

[AlStar]

I realise this is kinda late, but I did it anyway :< plz feedback and don't ask what I was smoking.

I like how you worked on getting a non-human (or even humanoid!) view, and I think, for the most part, you managed admirably.

My only issue really was with this bit of description:

The torso of a woman, bare flesh, navel and sculpted breasts. The hair flew freely, golden, amidst two black antennae that waved in the air, as if tasting it. The limbs were insectoid, a thick carapace that ended in formidable thorns. The thorax was striped a gaudy yellow and black, and a stinger dripped with milky poison.

It just doesn't gibe with how you had the slimes describe things before, like you did with the bats:

The cavern shook softly. The leather-wings nested in the caves, feasting on fruits of the cave-peach tree. Teeth that could shred a man right down to the bone, but nothing to a slime.

I think that the bit that really breaks the immersion for me is the "sculpted breasts". These are slimes which, as far as I can tell, are nothing more then amorphous blobs of protoplasm encased in a thicker membrane. How would something like that know what "sculpted breasts" (or, for that matter, "woman") would look like?

The ending also bothered me - you've squished two different ends together that shouldn't be able to coexist:
1) Our hero slime flees from the Beegirl, then hides in a crevice for a goodly time before coming out, small and weak from hunger.
and
2) Our hero slime runs into the Beegirl again, but the two other slimes, mortally wounded, appear and save our hero.

If other slimes are so badly wounded, they should've died off a long time before the hero stopped hiding.

Alternatively, I'm misreading, and the "A crash and blinding light" is a hallucination brought on by the Beegirl killing the hero, and the hero grabbing the Orb is all just in the hero's head(-like protuberance) as its membrane dissolves.

Alternatively, I'm really off, and your use of (shim/zhe/zer) has completely befuddled me.

[Ehndras]

Not a short story, but I figured I'd share it since I haven't contributed to the writing threads in a month or so. Enjoy, and if you have constructive criticism, do share. =)

Its a bit old, from the month when my ex-fiance and I split, so pardon the depressing romanticism.

--- --- ---

SUMMERS BREEZE
Date: 10-19-2011

Happiness – what a subjective emotion, so ruthless in its yearning, yet as fleeting as the sun-touched breeze of summer. Minuscule moments within the endless passage of time that seem to make all of our suffering, all of our pain worth bearing. How can simple smiles and childish laughter have such an absolute effect on one’s well-being and general demeanor? How can silence and isolation corrupt someone so deeply without an utterance of hurt?

Fragile things, we humans are.
Fractured to the core, yet euphoric by far.
Such eccentric things do we so cling to,
Our needs and desires so shallow and vain.
In love our hearts bind us; so foolish, hopeful and blind,
A foolish hopelessness that caresses so gently;
The universal opiate to fragile human minds.

Yet somehow, in the midst of this cultured madness,
Vast oceans of heedless wanting,
We find ourselves more truthful in our hopeless state,
Than ever we were in our solemn debate

For once were we hurt in the heart’s deception of hope,
Such that it fractured the bindings; tattered remnants of rope
And now, with blindness cured, the heart and mind set free,
our thoughts seem to wander to what dreams could not see.

Our love, once eternal, a pleasant breeze upon sun-kissed flesh,
Now lies barren and cold as the fell northern winds.
And though white-washed gazes show naught but ice and snow,
Beneath the sea of white lie the sleeping seeds of all we know

The light bears a shadow, in darkness we’re set free
Alone we each are broken, together we must be
Embrace the Fool for he knows best, in love and hope and utter loss,
For we who see with logical eye may as well try to grasp at the vast blue sky.

Such fools are we, enthroned by love, who fail to embrace it when push comes to shove
So quick to denounce great matters of heart, for one simple reason; Love once was broken apart
Our hearts rendered fallow, so barren to the touch,
A tear rendered null as the heart is frozen shut.

So quickly we lose touch with the yearning of our hearts,
As time, ever fleeting, makes us colder and colder.
So long do we wander, in darkness without reason,
Searching unknowingly for the light to shine forevermore.

— — —
I am unhappy. Not because I don’t love, not because I don’t understand love, not because I fail to grasp love. I am unhappy because my mind, in its logic, fails to comprehend the beauty of love that my heart knows so well. Through loss and suffering the heart may grow cold, but its the mind that so eagerly blinds itself to the matters of the heart. So eager to forsake love when it is hurt, because it is easier to believe love is a lie than to continue striving to accomplish what once went wrong.

I am unhappy because I’ve lost touch with my heart and, though I love and am loved in return, I cannot seem to comprehend that very same love; as if a connection has been broken not between us but within myself. It is as if all the warmth of my heart cannot penetrate the veil of ice my mind casts upon it, afraid to release it from its frozen prison.

When it comes down to it, as simple as it may be said, it may be put in one simple sentence. A short string of words that speak volumes more than this song ever could.

“…I am afraid to love again, in fear that I may hurt and be hurt just the same.”

[AlStar]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Disoriented, Max rose from his bed, making a wobbling course towards the bathroom. The stink of the cave seemed to still fill his nose, and upon reaching the sink he heaved and retched. His mother appeared in the doorway “Max! Oh, my poor baby! I’m sorry that I yelled at you, why don’t you take today off school and rest up – you look like something the dog dragged in.” She paused, “I’ve got to go to work, but you know that my number is right next to the phone downstairs if there’s an emergency. Have lots of liquids, and don’t eat anything too rich. I’ll be back around five.”  She disappeared, and the sounds of footfalls on the stairs, creek then thump of the door and muted roar of a car warming up and backing out of the driveway sounded in Max’s ears.

I know it's intentional, but the mother's monologue is way too compressed for me. How else could I put it... how about: the entire paragraph is in some weird midpoint between being very specific and very nonspecific and it just doesn't flow well as a result. Either it needs to be more spaced and slower, or less detailed and faster. I suppose it's really a matter of how much of the "real world" you want to interpose between the "dream" segments: Do you want to make the contrasts of the situations subtle now and obvious later, or obvious now and (presumably) hurry along to more complex interaction between the two? Right now I can't help thinking it's neither here nor there.

The rest of it I like.

Took a while to get back to really putting my nose to the grindstone, but I've finally put some more work into my story.

Here's my re-write of the bit that you quoted:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Disoriented, Max rose from his bed, making a wobbling course towards the bathroom. The stink of the cave seemed to still fill his nose, and upon reaching the sink he heaved and retched. His mother appeared in the doorway, a briefcase in hand, her heavy purse slung over her shoulder, “Max! Good; you’re up,” belatedly, she noticed his predicament, “Oh, my poor baby!” She glanced at her watch, “I’m sorry that I yelled at you,” from somewhere in her purse, a cell phone buzzed. Max’s mother started digging in her purse, wandering away from the doorway.

Over her shoulder, she said “Why don’t you take today off school and rest up – you look like something the dog dragged in.” She paused, plucking the phone out from a pocket and glancing at the number, “I’ve got to go to work, but you know that my number is right next to the phone downstairs if there’s an emergency. Have lots of liquids, and don’t eat anything too rich. I’ll be back around five.”  She disappeared, and the sounds of footfalls on the stairs, the creek then thump of the door and a muted roar of a car warming up and backing out of the driveway sounded in Max’s ears.

Opinions? Does it flow better?

[fqllve]

An idea for a possible SCP popped into my head and this seems like a decent place to put the idea out and see if anyone thinks it has enough potential to put more detailed work into.

I don't really know much about the SCP thing, but I really like that idea. It's funny but similar enough to real world phenomena to be disturbing. And I dunno, but there's this whole feel of cosmic irony to it, as if there weren't more efficient ways for these aliens to send their signals.

I would pretty much read anything based on that idea.

[Euld]

A story idea has been knocking around in my head for a while, I think it's time to let it free.  It's hot off the presses, enjoy.

Spoiler: The gap that's missing (click to show/hide)

A man woke up in a dark room.  He was bound with metal braces at every joint to a metal chair.  The chair vibrated and hummed very slightly.  He suspected the chair, the walls, the braces, and even his clothes were bugged with surveillance equipment.

Everything in the world was bugged with surveillance equipment.

He was the best operative ever trained by his organization.  He suspected everyone in his organization was dead now.  The world government had caught him.  If he was caught, then his organization must be gone by now.

He heard a door open.  Someone walked into the room.  A light switch was flipped.  The room was still dark--no, the man was wearing dark blinders.  The dark blinders were vibrating and humming slightly too.  Did they really need to know where he looked when he couldn't see?

A woman spoke.  "Can you hear me?"  She said.  He said nothing.  "Say anything.  I'm all ears," she said.

"Screw you," he said.  She didn't respond.  He could tell she was listening intently.  He suspected she still couldn't hear him.  That was good at least; the anti-surveillance tech in his body must still be working.  But how did they catch him if they couldn't even hear or see him?  He heard footsteps, then a hand brushed past his forearm, like the hand almost missed him.  The hand felt out his arm, like it was feeling out something in the dark.  It squeezed his arm, hard, then let go.

"I can't even feel the texture of the skin.  I can barely feel the physical resistance of the arm," she said.  "This isn't a cloaking device.  Not even a top of the line one.  This tech borders on theory; it's concealing things that are physically impossible to conceal."  Who was she talking to?  "He can't be just a pedophile.  He must be involved with the terrorists."  It still freaked him out to hear government officials call their enemies pedophiles and terrorists.  The world government declared the world crime-free years ago, minus the "pedophiles" and "terrorists."  Namely, anyone who opposed the idea of one hundred percent surveillance at all times was a pedophile if they were small time and a terrorist if they were serious.  Pedophiles didn't need to leave marks or bodies and terrorists were always planning the next attack.  Anyone could be either one at any time.

"No, I don't see them--wait hold on," she said.  Her hand found his arm again, and moved its way up to his head.  Felt around his head with her other hand too, then pinched the tops of his ears.  He felt a sliding sensation, a pressure on his nose, the blinders were being removed.  He could see now, but the room was pitch black.  "The glasses didn't become visible until they sat in my hand for two seconds.  Good Patriotism, I don't want to know how they made that possible."  It finally occurred to him.  He must be entirely invisible to them still.  "Yes sir," she said.  He heard a new set of footsteps.  Where did they come from?  Where they in the room the entire time?

"Do you recognize my voice?"  It was a man's voice.  It was the President's voice.

"Good god, I'm going to die here," the man in the chair said out loud.

"Hand me a gun, something from the early 2010s.  Thanks," the President said.  "Thank you for your cooperation, operative.  And yours, miss.  Give me a moment with the operative, then you can have the body for study."  The man in the chair stiffened, at least as much as he could manage to.  "I'm putting you out here and now.  And I'm going to enjoy it.  But first, it wouldn't hurt to tell you how we managed to find you.  You are aware our information gathering is one hundred percent complete?  A single atom on the Earth doesn't jiggle without us knowing about it.  Well it goes the other way too.  We knew something was wrong when we found gaps.  Certain spots left open in crowds, food eaten without the eater, bathrooms used without the crapper.  Light hitting sidewalks at the wrong times, oxygen being used that we didn't approve for use.  The tech your body is stuffed with is commendable, but we're everywhere."

The president pressed the gun to the man's head without feeling around for his head first.  The man in the chair couldn't move his head at all.  The president changed his mind.  He pulled the gun back.  Then he fired.  He shot the man in the chest, then the legs, the abdomen, and by then, the man in the chair lost count of where the bullets were going.  He screamed and tried to struggle as his strength drained away.  The room was already dark, but now it was going even darker.  Everything he heard sounded like it was at the end of a tunnel.  Then real darkness set in.

[Skyrunner]

NIce writing, interesting concept. I like it :3