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Author Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___  (Read 312994 times)

Repulsion

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #405 on: August 08, 2012, 09:15:00 pm »

Hmm. Thought I'd might as well post a story I worked on through my vacation, but haven't recently done much with it. Should start again soon, though. Not a whole lot of it, but I'll post what I got.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The cut-off is quite obvious :P
« Last Edit: August 13, 2012, 07:59:29 pm by Repulsion »
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Fishbreath

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #406 on: August 13, 2012, 12:16:39 pm »

Obvious indeed. As a big fan of science fiction, I feel called to read and comment (and the first few lines are promising), but that'll have to wait until after work.

In other news, I was talking with one of my friends earlier, and I cited Chandler's Law (pulp author Raymond Chandler's advice that "when in doubt [about what happens next], have a man burst through the door with a gun in his hand"). He suggested that would make for a potentially hilarious collaborative writing exercise: every participant writes 800 or 1000 words, and has to begin his section with someone with a gun bursting through the door.

AlStar

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #407 on: August 14, 2012, 11:48:00 am »

Hmm. Thought I'd might as well post a story I worked on through my vacation, but haven't recently done much with it. Should start again soon, though. Not a whole lot of it, but I'll post what I got.

I'll give my 2c on this, if you like.

Quote
The Comm TV showed a well-shaved man in a plain black uniform, standing stoically in front of a camera, presumably. “We’ve investigated all the leads, and we are sure that we’ve found it this time; on an old freighter heading towards the Callifras Spaceport.”
I don't like the positioning of "presumably" here. I'd move it to after "uniform,".
Any reason that he uses contractions some places ("We've") but not others ("we are")? If there isn't, you should probably pick one ("We have") or the other ("We're") and stick to it.

Quote
The man in the black suit leaned back in his office chair, which was well-padded with black leather, to the fortunate comfort of whoever wished to sit in it.

Suggestion: The man in the black suit leaned back in his comfortable, well-padded leather office chair.

Quote
All they had to do was send in a retrieval team before anybody else did so, and before the ship landed, of course.

Suggestion: All they had to do was be the first to send in a retrieval team before the ship landed.

Quote
After a few seconds, the entire wall cleared and suddenly it was a panoramic, breathtaking view of space. Mars was visible in the upper-right, half of the now-green planet in darkness.
 
Suggestion: After a few seconds, the entire wall cleared to reveal a breathtaking panormic view of space. Mars, now fully terraformed, was visible in the upper-right corner, its green surface half in darkness.

Quote
The window re-darkened behind him.
"Re-darkened"? I'd go with "Faded back to opacity."

Quote
“Nothing can really stop me now, can it?” He rubbed his hands together. “Funny, one of those apparently reputable diviners sent me a message that sai- Damnit, Buc, are you still on the TV?”
Buc nervously brushed some dust off his uniform and glanced around “Yes, I am still on the TV, sir. Should I possibl-“
“Yes! Go, idiot!” The man glared at Buc until Buc leaned over and flicked a switch, upon which the TV flicked off.

Suggestion: "Nothing can really stop me now, can it?" He said to himself, rubbing his hands together. "Funny, one of those apparently reputable diviners sent me a message that sai..." He noticed that the screen in front of him still held the man in black uniform, who was nervously twitching as he held his position. "Damnit, Buc - are you still there?"
"Um, yes sir." Buc replied, brushing an invisible fleck of dust off his uniform. "Did you want..."
"Yes! Go, you idiot!" the man roared, causing Buc to jump for a switch, leaving the screen blank.

Quote
Sighing, he sagged into his chair. He opened a drawer in his black desk and pulled out a paper-thin screen, turning it on. A folder with several files stored away appeared, and he opened one, a message.

I think this entire bit could be shortened to just "Sighing, he sagged into his chair and brought up a report on his screen."

Quote
   “Too many unknown factors, all the time,’ the man said, grumbling. “There is so much only time will tell, and sometimes there is simply not enough time.” The man put a hand over his heart and blankly stared at the clock on his wall, which had just struck 12 PM.
   “No, simply not enough,” he whispered quietly.
           
I know you're trying to impress that time is an important factor, but I'd try to do it some other way than repeating "time" 3 times in a row.
Also, 12 PM is noon; so unless he's late for lunch, I think you mean 12 AM (midnight.)

 
Quote
Arn smiled, leaning against the side of the metal ramp that led up to the huge freighter, the captain of the ship talking to an obscure person in a hood not ten feet to his right. The captain knew him, and, like most people, ignored him. Arn wasn’t much of a sight; many of his clothes were more like experiments in sewing than actual clothes, and he was scruffy-looking, even scarred in some places, obvious signs of someone who lived in a rough ghetto where even the environment was the enemy.

The way you've got this worded, it sounds like you're describing the obscure person in a hood, not Arn.

Quote
   “I would hope so... who is that?” This time, the hooded man pointed towards Arn. Arn pretended not to notice, staring straight ahead as he was for the past few minutes. The captain glanced over at him and shrugged.
“A nobody. He got taken on by one of those smiths who made it big in the metal-crafting industry, or as big as you can get, anyway. I guess the smith owed him something, or he paid somehow. Either way, don’t worry about him.” The captain turned back to the hooded man, and the hooded man nodded once in understanding and turned back to the captain. Case in point: everyone ignored Arn.
   
I think that it'd be better for Arn to go unnoticed entirely, without the man in the cloak seeing him and the wierd reply from the captain to not 'worry about him.'
Makes it sound like the captain is trying to run some kind of scam, and it makes the man in the cloak seem like an idiot, since he should (at very least) tell the captain to shut the hell up about the cargo in front of people, and more likely should immediately start freaking out that someone is listening in to their conversation.

Quote
The captain nodded several times and smiled. Presumably seeing that the captain understood, the hooded man took one last glance around and walked away.

Ditch the 'presumably'.


Anyway, I think it's a good start, and look forward to seeing more of it.

Repulsion

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #408 on: August 14, 2012, 12:43:58 pm »

Ah, thanks for the review. Good catch on the "Suggestion: All they had to do was be the first to send in a retrieval team before the ship landed."

I think you have already guessed that the story will involve many... factions, as it were. If you did, you guessed right.
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schrocko88

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #409 on: August 15, 2012, 03:32:46 am »

The prologue of some Fallout fanfic I wrote 3th hour in health class. School started today. :o Anyway, I wrote this in about twenty minutes, before getting the rough draft torn out of my notebook by an angry high school teacher wondering why I wasn't paying attention. There are a few swear words. Just a fair warning, so if at all offended by that sort of thing, well you can take that up with my lawyer, Mr. IDon'tCareLeaveMeAlone.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Reudh

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #410 on: September 01, 2012, 06:45:43 am »

Besides a few formatting and grammatical errors, I think that that's a good piece. Having known the Fallout universe I can say that your writing style definitely fits it quite well.

I reckon' this page needs a CPR too, so...

HIYA, THREAD, ARISE!

Tsuchigumo550

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #411 on: September 01, 2012, 10:22:10 pm »


The small, abandoned town that had become a warzone was vacant again. There stood only three soldiers now, surrounded by bodies, shells, and blood.

Rain had began to fall mid-combat, slowly working the blood clean. It was still coming down, with no end in sight.

One of the remaining soldiers stood in the rain. His helmet lie on the ground next to him, and a smoldering cigarette hung from his mouth. His gun hung loosely from his side as he looked down at one of the bodies. The cigarette quit burning, completely turned to ashes, as the man expressionlessly lit another and put it to his lips.

Not far away were two other soldiers, one with a disproportionately large rifle strapped to her back.
She was sobbing gently, enveloped in the arms of the third soldier. He was a large man, bear-like in build, his rifle slung across his back as well. He wrapped his arms around the fragile-looking sniper, a lost and forlorn look on his face as he did his best to comfort her.

She was nearly crying herself to sleep in the man's arms, her sobs becoming quieter and quieter. Her eyes seemed dull and lightless as she cried, unable to speak anymore, not wanting to speak anymore. She managed to squeak out a few more words between sobs.

"Damnit... W-why is it that... Why did Ferret have to die? Why... does it hurt so much... even though we didn't get shot..?"

The big guy hugging her, appropriately nicknamed Bear, only held her tighter and whispered in her ear.
"It's because he was a nice guy. Wars aren't a place for nice people."

The sniper, "Hawk", only cried harder after hearing Bear's words.

The man in the rain looked up after what must have been at least 30 minutes. Rain was dripping off of his face, and he barely took notice.
"Good luck out there... Ferret."
The man pulled out a pistol and fired into the air. One, two, three, he fired until his magazine ran dry. He kept pulling the trigger, over and over.

Hawk had finally given out and fallen asleep in Bear's arms. He gently picked her up and took her inside one of the buildings nearby.

Outside, a faint voice was heard.
"Sorry about that... I didn't have enough bullets for 21."

The man known as Gold Dust dropped the pistol and looked around, almost as though for the first time. Bear emerged from the building and joined up with him. "I'm ready, Gold Dust. Let's get him home proper.

Gold Dust and Bear lifted one of the corpses, long since drained of blood and left with a hole in it's chest. This body belonged to Ferret. The two moved Ferret's body out of the rain, and went inside to check on Hawk's radio equipment.

---

After the rain gave in a little, Gold Dust finally got to HQ on the radio. Hawk was still asleep, albeit fitfully so, and Bear watched over her.

"This is Hound Team 2. Report, HQ."
"This is U.S. Blue HQ, verify?"
"Hotel-niner-oh-Whiskey-Foxtrot-Two."
"What's your status, Hound Team 2?"
"We have a man down, confirmed KIA. Requesting evac chopper."
"We have a lock on your coordinates, the nearest transport chopper's a good ten minutes out. Is your mission complete?"
"I hope so, HQ. Any more of these bastards show up and try to kill my men again and they'll be begging for an off-the-record interrogation room."
"Be careful. Blue HQ out."

Bear looked back at Gold Dust.
"You'd better take some time off when we get back."
"Yeah. I will. But this ain't exactly a vacation home."
"Hell no it isn't. Let's just wait things out."

The radio crackled to life again, but this time it was spewing Russian. Gold Dust listened carefully.

"They're on to us. The remainder of that squad we took down, looks like at least three groups. Let's get ready while we can, we've got all of three minutes."

Bear stepped outside and grabbed an LMG off of one of the soldiers, and whatever ammo he could grab. Gold Dust picked up any grenades or guns he could carry on his person, and they both returned to the house.

The radio crackled to life again before Bear shut it off.
"Here's the afterparty..."

"I'm going to kill every last one of these bastards. If any of them live, I'm sure they'll LOVE HQ when I get done with them."

Bear, on the other hand, nervously looked back at Hawk. She wasn't a sound sleeper, but she had been awake for 72 hours before crying herself to sleep. She'd be defenseless until then."

"I don't care what you do so long as you live, Gold Dust. My goal is to make sure Hawk lives through this."
"You'd better live too, you crazy sonofabitch. I know what you're known for."
"I'm still alive because of it."

---

An opening to a war story chapter. This is after a close squadmate dies, and there's still a ton of emotions flying. Bear is focused but worn down and Gold Dust won't care much for his life right now. That will come into play... later.
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AlStar

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #412 on: September 10, 2012, 10:53:56 am »

Page 3? Inconceivable!

Tsuchigumo, you didn't actually mention if you wanted feedback on your piece, but since I've got some free time (and because I don't just want to say "bump",) I'll throw some your way.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just the first part for now (this takes longer then you'd think), if you're interested I can do the rest.

Eek-A-Mouse

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #413 on: September 11, 2012, 11:26:41 pm »

This is a bit rushed and unedited. I'd be happy to hear any comments or criticisms.

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Fishbreath

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #414 on: September 12, 2012, 07:57:20 am »

I hate to be the one always harping on punctuation, but as I always say, "Narration and dialog tags should be separated from dialog in quotations by a comma. When interrupting myself—" I'd also put the em-dash inside the quotation, too, but on that issue I'm honestly not sure what the style guides say.

Tangent: I actually prefer to leave the comma outside the 'single quotes', as I'm told they are called, when I'm quoting a word or phrase, but that's technically incorrect too. It's just I'm an engineer, you see, so the imprecision of leaving the comma inside the quotation marks just kills me.

Skyrunner

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #415 on: September 20, 2012, 09:07:56 am »

I think dashes when interrupted or cut off go inside the quotation marks.

I wonder, do translations count as postable? :D I'm slowly working on one. Need proofreading, or someone to tell me this is a horrid boring story and he doesn't know why I'n bothering >.>
Or maybe just reviews.
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Tsuchigumo550

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #416 on: September 20, 2012, 05:57:33 pm »

---CHECKMATE---

Dim blue light filled the darkened operations room, cold air flowing in through noiseless ventilators and large screens displaying data.
A general sat in the middle, with four soldiers in armored suits standing in front of him.

The general spoke up.
"We have a huge problem. Apparently the enemy got the drop on us and took down an entire convoy. Normally we wouldn't sent an armored squad out, but... I'll let the audio log do the talking."

Speakers played static, then a man's voice came through.
"Approaching I7. We'll make it to the drop zone with time to spa-"
An explosion sounded, fairly close by the crackling of the speaker failing to register the full volume.
"Jesus Christ! Convoy Team A taking fire! Teams B and C, respond!"
"TEAMS B AND C, RESPOND!"

Gunfire could be heard along with another explosion.
"I-It's the Death Corps! I'd recognize those all-black frames anywhere! We're done!"
Two more explosions, then static filled the ops room.

"That's why we're sending you, Lynx Squad. You're the only one outfitted well enough to take them down."

The four soldiers saluted, turned, and left the room in unison.

---

Moments later four mecha left from the base, each one a brilliant white. They were the last of the Corporation's pilots, the strongest and best outfitted. Each soldier had gone through rigorous training, ready for any conflict to arise.

They had rivals. For instance, the group they were sent out to fight, soldiers of the Felix Foundation. Other companies fought in the war and had pilots ready to stake everything on the line, and it led to the massive war that tore the world to shreds.

Zodiac, the leader of the Lynxes, commanded his troops from within his mecha. All the Lynx were bipedal machines, but no two were alike.

They moved along the ground conserving fuel to their target area, less than 10 minutes away.

---
"Look out for anything on scanners, we're in the mission zone. Find, destroy, and salvage from the Death Corps. Mission time is 10 minutes."

The white mechs had barely begun to scan the area when a loud crack echoed through the lightly forested terrain.

"Ahh! Ha... I'm fine. Left arm's got no response. We have a sniper, gonna provide some cover fire..."
Sanya, the specialist of the group built for intel collection and long range assault had already lost a big chunk of her available weaponry with her left arm including an all-important radar, but she still had a missile launcher and rifle. Her missile system scanned the general area the sniper was before firing a barrage of 12 missiles, followed by Sanya dashing forward to attack directly. The rest of the squad dashed ahead in front of Sanya, to assault the unit that attacked.

The missiles seemed to get a lock on a target, as all 12 homed in on the same spot and promptly exploded. Sanya fired off another 12, as the white machines covered ground quickly to reach the now injured sniper...

More warning lights flashed as scanners in the mecha frames went off. Directly behind the Lynx were the other three Death Corps members.

"Shit!" cried out Sanya, narrowly missing the bright flash of an enemy energy sword. She fired upon the group with her rifle as did the others with their weapons, but it was useless. From an entirely different position, the sniper mech fired again, putting a bullet directly through one of the Lynx cockpits. It uselessly tried to eject itself before exploding violently.

Sanya's somewhat slower mech was being hounded by the much faster blade-carrying Death Corps, as the hidden sniper picked away at the remaining units. The leader was fighting back with energy weapons, but one of the Death Corps caught up and delivered a solid blade directly into the side of his mech, stunning it and almost throwing it down to the ground. The Death Corps member followed up with another solid blade driven into the cockpit, as the sniper took out the other Lynx. All that was left was Sanya, who still tried to escape in vain.

The bright blades of the Death Corps soon lit into Sanya's machine, ripping apart the heavy armor and working it's way to the cockpit. Sanya was typing as fast as she could on the console in her mecha, authorizing protocols and the like, before a single screen appeared before her.

"CHECKMATE Y/N"

She hit Y, feeling another blade slash through the core of her mech.

"AUTHORIZATION CODE"

She typed quickly, sure to make no mistakes.

"AUTHORIZATION CODE"
"NIGHTMARE OF NIGHTMARES"

The console blinked as another blade was driven into Sanya's core, as hot metal began to wear away to the onslaught. However, the weapon located in the rear of the core was intact.

"AUTHORIZATION CODE ACCEPTED."
"HAVE A NICE AFTERLIFE AND THANK YOU"

Sanya's mecha exploded, but it wasn't caused by the energy blades. A small nuclear warhead had been affixed to the back of Sanya's core, and she set it off before the Death Corps could eat away her armor.

The nuclear detonation immolated the three blade mecha and the sniper, along with causing major damage to the surrounding area. The base had to be evacuated, but the Corporation had just lost more than their strongest pilots- they also lost their stronger enemies.
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There are words that make the booze plant possible. Just not those words.
Alright you two. Attempt to murder each other. Last one standing gets to participate in the next test.
DIRK: Pelvic thrusts will be my exclamation points.

Fishbreath

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #417 on: September 20, 2012, 07:24:31 pm »

I think dashes when interrupted or cut off go inside the quotation marks.

I wonder, do translations count as postable? :D I'm slowly working on one. Need proofreading, or someone to tell me this is a horrid boring story and he doesn't know why I'n bothering >.>
Or maybe just reviews.

I'd say they absolutely count. I've read a small handful of Russian short stories in Russian, and I've also read a couple of translated versions of each. I'd say it's harder to be a good translator than a good writer, because a translator has to write in someone else's voice and carry it over a language barrier besides.

kingfisher1112

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #418 on: September 27, 2012, 08:46:02 am »

I've got a small story that I want to turn into a series. Here you are:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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AlStar

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #419 on: September 27, 2012, 03:10:31 pm »

I've got a small story that I want to turn into a series.
Some thoughts:

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« Last Edit: September 27, 2012, 03:12:32 pm by AlStar »
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