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Wow. Excellent advice. Thank you
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Good point about economy of words, and the best way to do this is with compression. Packing a lot of meaning into a few words adds a lot of power and punch to the prose. Consider this opening sentence from William Gibson's Neuromancer:
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
In one short sentence, Gibson sets the scene, tone, and theme. We know we are in a port city, the weather is dreary and grim, and we get a strong sense of technological angst.
A lesser writer might have spent paragraphs describing that opening scene. Gibson did it in fifteen words and then immediately jumped into the dialog and action. That's very powerful, and doesn't give the reader a chance to lose interest.
Good editing is the art of removing words, not adding them. When you've done away with the unimportant stuff and have nothing left you can take out, that's when you're done. As the apocryphal quote goes, "I'd have written a shorter letter if I'd had the time."
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You misspelled "quiet" as "quite". Sorry, my OCD acting up.
It's too long, with not enough motion. Why do I need all this info here and now. You could have established his "priest" persona more rapidly. All the detail just slows down the pace. Maybe at this point, you require the pace to be slow and methodical, but I don't sense that. Try saying all the same stuff in half the words. Concentrate on the scene, for versimilitude, or concentrate on the character's experiences. What does he think on entering the church. How does it affect him. Does it bring back memories? This will help you elucidate his past, which I assume you need to do, without requiring so much overt recitation of fact.
Don't spend too many words getting the geeky stuff right. Why not remove the battery and keep the phone? Why not leave the thing turned on and drop it in a dumpster (oops, that's Dumpster)? Why not toss it into the bay? The particular way he disposed of the phone either directly furthers the plot (like the police find it and run fingerprints), or it's irrelevant, in which case why waste words on it ("...disposed of the burner phone...". Too many words is a bigger problem for authors than not enough words. Don't worry, you'll fill your allotment of pages.
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Thank you
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Kevin Marois wrote: It was well lit, quite, and out of the way – all good reasons for he used it for his purposes.
I like it but one thing jarred me, I think you meant quiet not quite.
Have a good one.
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But you have no objection to "all good reasons for he used it for ..."?
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Message Closed
modified 18-Aug-15 15:39pm.
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Maybe you could post some of your writings?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Message Closed
modified 22-Sep-15 15:34pm.
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What made you feel like it was ok to come in here and insult me - twice?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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jibalt wrote: Don't quit your day job.
This kind of thing is why most aspiring writers quit. Writing fiction is like learning a musical instrument, it doesn't matter much how good you are now, the main thing is whether or not you stick with it and put in the practice. Keep writing daily and ignore the naysayers, and you're ahead of 90% of the competition.
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Aspiring writers quit because of snarky comments in sewers like the CP lounge? I don't think so.
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Kevin Marois wrote: “Thank you, I will Brother.” he replied, “God Bless”
... should be "Thank you, I will Brother," he replied. "God Bless."
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Message Closed
-- modified 4-Aug-15 11:14am.
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Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Rules for the FOSW ![ ^]
if(this.signature != "")
{
MessageBox.Show("This is my signature: " + Environment.NewLine + signature);
}
else
{
MessageBox.Show("404-Signature not found");
}
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Have you tried asking for help in the appropriate forum?
You can lead a developer to CodeProject, but you can't make them think.
The Theory of Gravity was invented for the sole purpose of distracting you from investigating the scientific fact that the Earth sucks.
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Couple of things:
1) Ask in the right place: http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/ask.aspx[^] - this is not for questions as it clearly says at eth top of the page.
2) Don't ask for code, or for a general "help me to create this app" - you need to ask a specific question, and show us that you have tried, what you have tried, and where you are stuck. We don't do homework, and we don't do your job either! 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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First of all, I see you are a new member of Code Project, so welcome. I hope that you come to enjoy your time here, and find it a valuable resource.
Unfortunately, you have chosen to post what could be considered a programming question in the Lounge. This is one of the few areas of CP where programming questions are looked down on. You will get a lot of flippant or sarcastic replies because of this. In future, you should think about what forum you need to post your question in. Saying that, your question is actually a request for someone else to help you write the source - again, this is something that tends to be looked down on here in CP. We do like to see that you have made an effort. We will generally help with specific problems - requests for work are ignored.
I will add that your question betrays a lack of understanding of certain items of web development. In all but the simplest of static pages, you are not just going to be writing HTML - you are going to be using JavaScript, and you will have code running at a remote server - this will handle things like retrieving your tasks, saving them, logging in, validation, and so on. When you write your question, you need to be very careful about the terminology that you use because you can easily end up getting answers to the wrong question, just because we answered the question you asked.
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You must have a copy of that post that you use just for these situations -- I seem to remember reading something exactly like this on other occasions!
Marc
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It's a variation. I really should keep a master copy. It would save a bit of time.
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The Beat Goes On
============
Beat Nicolas Cage-free Chicken Dumplinguistics and StoneS may break my bone butter and jellyfishy around here she is, Miss Amerigo Verspucci Gucci shoeleatherbacked turtle soup kitchen with Dinah Shorebird on a wire transfer station cop on the beat
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You're trying to break the spam filter, aren't you?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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No, but a little exercise never hurt anybody.
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Will be in London being a bum for a week arriving Sunday. Too much to hope for meeting up with any CPians. But if you happen to run across a long haired (bloody Yank) tourist complaining that "he's on the television every week but the week I decide to come here, no Daleks, no Cybermen and no Weeping Angels. Where is that elephanting blue box?", I think I can stand to buy you a ![Beer | [beer]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif) even at London prices.
You can lead a developer to CodeProject, but you can't make them think.
The Theory of Gravity was invented for the sole purpose of distracting you from investigating the scientific fact that the Earth sucks.
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