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Mark_Wallace wrote: When I worked as a subm.ed, we used have great fun identifying which creative*
writing course or style guide** a hopeful had followed.
That is the fault of the writer, not the course. No methodology should be slavishly adhered to (I include scrum and design patterns here  ) but it can help a writer discover their voice and teach them to show, not tell.
I agree that a story that is plainly based on a course/style guide is probably not worthy but we all have to start somewhere and learn: perhaps, instead of binning, you should have taken a few minutes to pen a response pointing out why you didn't take the story. Without constructive criticism how would you expect anyone to learn?
Not everyone can write: sometimes people need to be told that.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
me, me, me
me, in pictures
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mark merrens wrote: Without constructive criticism how would you expect anyone to learn?
Criticism of any kind is normally useless, because no-one believes that they have written something badly, even after you point out however many flaws -- and if you're foolish enough to say that something is "not bad" or "shows promise", that is immediately taken to mean "the best writing in the history of the world!"
The only way to become a competent writer is by writing. All the time.
Having ideas is pointless, if you can't transfer thoughts from your head to other people's heads through the printed medium, so you need to:
-- Learn grammar, because that will help you to be understood.
-- Ignore "advice", like style guides, opinions of other people who also want to write, Godawful writing web-sites, and half-arsed courses.
-- Write. All the time, and about everything.
When you look at something or see something happen, immediately start working out how to describe it in your head, And Put The Words Down On Paper*, so that you can read them back later, to see how inadequate the words are.
You can throw it in the bin as soon as you've read it back, but keep writing!
If you can't describe simple, everyday things in a way that your target readership can visualise them exactly how you see them, then there's no way you're competent to write anything grander, so you have to keep writing until you do become competent enough.
10,000,000 words ought to be a good start.
* Electronic paper counts.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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You make good points; nevertheless, you are still incorrect: a poor writer may take it the wrong way; a good writer will use it to his/her advantage. Perhaps "shows promise" is not a good way to go unless qualified, even in some small way.
BTW; I have done, for my whole life, as you suggest; constantly writing and trashing. I have reams of rubbish and a few morsels of the good stuff. However, I still feel I gained from taking the courses. Of course they may not help everybody but to dismiss them out of hand is more than a little arrogant.
One may write a million words and still say nothing.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
me, me, me
me, in pictures
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mark merrens wrote: One may write a million words and still say nothing.
Perhaps, but after having written a million words, you will at least be able to write "nothings" more competently -- and that's what to aim at: competence. Not "brilliance" or "creativity", but being able to write words that convey meaning, and being able to structure information to best effect.
When you can do that, you can write anything. Other people's opinions on what makes good writing are completely irrelevant, unless your objective is to write precisely how they write (thereby losing any uniqueness that you may be able to offer), and courses, style guides, etc. are no more than other people's opinions, expressing absolute rules (which are not rules at all).
I always advise people to get:
-- The smallest grammar book they can find, because there are less than 200 actual rules of grammar, so a big book will be full of either waffle or opinionated discussion, study it, and only ever break those rules if it's really necessary (the number of people I've had to bash over the head for using "would'a ~~ would'a" for a subjunctive doesn't bear counting, and "people who don't understand what Passive Voice means" might as well be a mass noun).
-- An equally small book on the rules of punctuation, and follow those rules (I'll send a few of the boys around to visit the next person who tells me that a comma represents a pause).
But too many hopefuls expend all their energy on learning "rules" that are not rules, and then treat most of the actual rules with disdain and rigidly fixate on a few that others have opinions on.
E.g:
Q: What is the difference between "less" and "fewer"?
A: There isn't one.
Q: Can I end a sentence with a preposition?
A: Unless you're writing in Latin, go ahead (most sentences accused of ending with a prep actually don't, anyway, because most words that we use as preps have other functions, and are therefore not preps all the time).
Q: What's the best way to check for dangling modifiers?
A: Don't bother. If they're part of reported speech, then they're just accurate reported speech; if not, does it read well? That's what you have to check for.
Q: How do I avoid using passive voice?
A: You don't. Avoiding passive voice means avoiding half the usage of at very least every transitive verb. You might as well cut a few fingers off.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
If you want to call what I say arrogance, go for it, but you couldn't be more wrong.
The best advice you can give a hopeful writer is "don't follow advice; just write".
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: If you want to call what I say arrogance, go for it, but you couldn't be more
wrong.
Trust me, I have often been more wrong.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
me, me, me
me, in pictures
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Sheldon: More wrong? Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to degradation.
Stuart: It's a little wrong to say to say a tomato is a vegetable, it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
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I think "wronger" is a much more satisfying word. I'll have a word with the Queen, and get her to put it in the dictionary.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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mark merrens wrote: When you are done you can self-publish to Amazon which I just did.
Ah, so it was your books they had to remove! 
Retailer Amazon has removed several abuse-themed e-books from its Kindle Store after a report highlighted titles depicting rape, incest and bestiality.
WH Smith has taken its UK site completely offline until all abuse-themed e-books are removed from its product listings.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Thank you
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I think you should use a consistent font color, the alternating black and blue is distracting to your readers. 
(Edit: why is my ;P face showing up as "??" ?)
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Reported the issue!
Keep Clam And Proofread
--
√(-1) 23 ∑ π...
And it was delicious.
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That's how it appears pasted into CodeProject. I'm typing it in Word
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I know. The tone of my post is lost without the smiley face. Guess I could have used the "joke" icon instead though.
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Only if you select a programming language in your <pre> tags; you should use "text". As to the actual story, it needs quite a bit of polishing, those terse sentences get a bit tedious after the first paragraph.
Veni, vidi, abiit domum
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You're a complete bloody genius. Don't stop. I think you'll make millions have thousands of adoring fans and perhaps win the Nobel prize.
Peter Wasser
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Frank Zappa
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Well, you've got one thing over many would-be writers. You are actually writing.
I'm a reader, and have only toyed with the idea of fiction writing. I tell you that so that you understand that I come from the consumer standpoint and not the standpoint of a fellow craftsman. I do know that most writing is rewriting, so please don't take anything I say as discouragement. I appreciate anyone who attempts this task.
I think if the death of the man's wife is going to be critical to either the story or his character development and you might want to treat it differently. I personally discard authors who spend time leading up to an event and then slide through it too quickly and then explain on the other side the ramifications of the event. That's as bad as over-describing the event but on the other side.
By the end of this set of paragraphs, I don't feel anything for the wife. I feel sorry for the man, sure, but that's just compassion not empathy. I'm sorry he had to go through that and I know I wouldn't want to...however it would be a better book if I felt something less callous toward the woman.
If I had met her, in the book, and liked some aspect of her I'd probably feel some loss myself. Maybe that would be bad for a mystery, I don't know. If you wrote it up and didn't like it you could always discard it. But this might as well be a newspaper report rather than a pivotal moment in a man's life.
To put it another way: "a drunk had crossed the line and that was that" is telling me that the man is trying to wrap his mind around the meaninglessness of the death and the rest of the paragraphs tell me that he is failing. However that's not really a book I want to read. The man is extremely centered around himself and that's not really the only way people react to such a death. You hold up no moments or qualities of the woman he lost so we can see that he's mourning not just his own loss but her loss.
She lost her life. She lost all the moments she was going to have. She lost all that she is ever going to be, and has put finality on all she ever was. She will have no more children, no more parties, no more joy. He might well be mourning what she was robbed of as well as his own loss. If it feels like that is too raw then it might make even more sense to write it. Her last moments were horror filled, knowing that she could do nothing to stop the accident as it happened and knowing that she would never hold her husband again. Maybe she died quickly, and maybe she bled to death hoping that someone would arrive in time not quite believing that this would be her last seconds to think, feel, and regret whatever she had to regret. Maybe he feels all of that and more and can't stand the bitter unfairness.
I'd rather not read the self-centered version. If he's going to refuse to understand his wife's loss from more than his own self then I'm not going to end up liking him. At which point you are better off skipping ahead and referring back to this section of the change in his life but only in a vague way so we don't have to experience the raw emotion or the self-pity of the character. I loathe self-pity. I stopped reading Stephen R. Donaldson over that.
If all that doesn't make sense, then don't write it that way. Different readers like different things, and I look for different things when I read sci-fi than when I read drama, or mystery.
_____________________________
Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug...
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I can't get the site to load at all 
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Didn't think of that 
Either way, it's working now. 
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Just finished watching it, and man, it's an amazing movie. The storyline sounds boringly average - plane crashes, guy gets stranded on island, and what happens next is what's all the movie about.
But the way they've played it on the screen, including the acting is very unreal. I would like to say some more, but in case someone reading this hasn't seen it yet, I don't want to spoil it for them.
I think it's one of the very best movies I've seen. If you haven't seen it, I urge that you do.
"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.
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I only watched it because people had said it was good. I just didn't get it. It wasn't terrible but certainly was not a great movie.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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The place where he went to deliver the package after 4 years, did you notice that the name of that establishment had changed? And you're left to guess which road he chose at the end, which I don't want to spoil here. There's something about all that being connected.
"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.
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Rajesh R Subramanian wrote: best movies I've seen
I agree with you there. I'm hearing that Tom Hanks' new movie 'Captain Phillips' is his best since 'Cast Away', looking forward to seeing it.
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One of my favs! The only part that irks me was how his wife handled it at the end. Understandable, but still...
- S
50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!
Code, follow, or get out of the way.
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