@Aerovistae: in light of KitFox's post above, I don't think that would be well-received.

Oh oh oh I did not see that. Ignore me!

No, no.

You're right :)

How strange, though. He seems to be asking a sincere question, doesn't he?

You just missed that little nugget.

Looks like it to me too.

Hmph.

Although he is arguing with @JohnSmithers that the question is on topic, lol

I don't know the whole story at EL&U. He might just be flooding their site with on-topic-but-poor-quality questions, and creating sockpuppets to get around SE filter mechanisms.

Persnaps...

:P

In other words, you can be sincere and still get banned.

The one time I got myself banned from StackOverflow (it was a really hard project), it was altogether too easy to just sign in to my other account and continue

You made a project of it? :P

no, no!

I'm a comp sci major

:listening:

( you evidently program as well _

I find just about everyone on SE does, which I find amusing...to be continued...

but anyway

I had to make a full-on operational multi-threaded chat server and client, having never done any network programming before in my life....not a single TCP connection ever

and idk if you've done network programming in C/C++ before, but it is a nightmare to grasp the nuts and bolts when you're new to it

so I was asking a million questions, and they were so specific they kept getting downvoted, and yeah...banned from asking questions.

as you said...sincere but banned.

Yup, I can see that happening... SE is tough to grok.

but anyhow I love that just about everyone on here programs, or is a server admin, or a serious Unix user, or something technical like that.

If you look at people's accounts, almost all of us have an SO or ServerFault or Unix account

The question-ban thing makes sense in many ways, but sooo many people will shrug and open a new account. It's like a gateway drug - rolls you down into the really bad stuff :P

Only so much you can do.

Well, personally, I'd be happier with more variety :)

how do you mean?

More pro writers! :P

It would be amazing if we had a big name here

I sometime feel like if JK Rowling or Stephen King or whatever knew about this site, they would be avid users.

that would be pretty neat

I gotta go. Nice talking :)

seeya later

@Standback @Aerovistae if you want the full story on that user, you can visit the ELU chat and ask "what's up with Nortonn" (that's the name of the first acct he created of many)

Here is my entry for today's writing exercise

This is my writing exercise

Here is my writing exercise.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////‌​..........

^Seriously, what's up with that bizarre default? Is it a Writers' salutation?

It's to foil the plagiarism detectors.

Supposedly.

because they're automated, of course!

not just people recognising things

We're all automated here

Do tell!

@Aerovistae @Standback Not just poor quality, but plagiarized from other sources as well.

Any ideas about something, I dunno, a bit specific today? Does anyone have a topic to suggest?

@Mussri Did you see the writing exercise?

Well, I thought we could look at what folks wrote from last week, but I hadn't thought of anything specific to discuss.

Do you have a topic in mind?

@Mr.shiny I have it opened right now...

@Mussri So where's yours? :)

@Mussri Do you have a blog or other website to post it on? Or can you stick it in a Dropbox or file sharer?

@KitFox, "Do you have a topic in mind?" -I'm warming up; it's my first session anyhow. In an hour, maybe?

Sure. We'll start in an hour or so anyway.

Just a moment, I think I have something ready here.

No worries. Don't feel that you need to do the exercise.

Sorry? Which exercise? I thought you meant just something short I've written before as an exercise... Interested?

@Mussri Oh, sure!

I think the heatwave has affected our writing. we each chose hot locations.

@MattЭллен It definitely affected mine. I was actually sitting on my patio contemplating the ivy when I started putting my thoughts together

:D excellent

Mine isn't as hot as yours.

:wink:

@Matt, @Mr.Shiny, It's blistering here and it is not my choice!

brb

I actually considered taking my story in a completely different direction. Like discussing the garden, etc, but then a giant tulip walks around the corner and stabs me with a rusty nail while singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

But it seemed a bit too random.

that is quite random

surreal even

I liked how the ivy slowly encroached on everything. I wasn't expecting it at the end, it really crept up on me.

@MattЭллен :)

Right, original works or fanfiction? @KitFox, @Matt, @Mr.S, at etc...

@Mussri suspicious of fanfic What kind of fanfic?

@Mussri Well, the writing exercise was meant to meet certain criteria

But if you don't have something like that ready, I'm willing to consider anything short

Yeah, up to let's say six or so paragraphs.

And for @Matt and @MrShiny, we need a new code phrase for the secret room.

oh

...or not, if you don't want to.

I thought there may be explication forth hence

but sure, I'm game!

Well...now certain people know it, and I'm being exclusionary.

OK, never mind, forget I said anything.

forgets with the ease of Cerberus

@KitFox, The good kind, I hope.

Good kind of fanfic?

@Mr.S, Well, it's 'for-me-short' so 6 paragraphs may not be it... Anyway, anyone here into Nolan's Inception?

@KitFox, Yes, just a minute.

@KitFox, try this...

Which event? I see no events.

Wow. I got an invite and everything.

:-)

@Mussri OK, I got three paragraphs in and I don't understand any of it. I am not familiar with Inception though.

@Gigili Chat event. It's Writers Chat. Hello, sweetie.

Hi @MetaEd, you must have signed up, huh?

@KitFox I just do what I'm told!

So we had a writing exercise for today. Matt, MrShiny, me, and @DForck have links, and Mussri is sharing a short fanfic (it's his first time here). Anyone else?

Basic question: bring something to workshop? Is there a genre, limit to word count, any kind of guideline?

Or is there an assigned exercise?

hello!

Hi!

Hello Kitty.

@KitFox i'm curious to see what everyone came up with

i forgot to actually write two paragraphs

@MetaEd We had an exercise this week, but if you didn't do it or want to share something else, you can, as long as it is not longer than six or so paragraphs.

@KitFox ✓

For people posting on blogs, MrShiny gave us some nice boilerplate for folks who want to use it. It will help promote the site and our chat.

@DForck42 I posted your little one. The links are above.

Yay, administrivia! something I'm occasionally good at

high fives @MrShiny

I'm going to assume that everyone is reading the exercises at the moment.

This week or next week's exercise?

I've read them; according to my clock the "event" starts in 4 minutes, so, brb

@KitFox ahh, i jsut missed it wheni joined the chat

When we're done with that, let's see how you felt about using this kind of prompt.

@Gigili This week's. We haven't figured next week's yet.

I see that two of our contributors wrote a lot more than just two paragraphs. I'm guessing this was helpful? Did the limitation of no dialog help or hinder your story development?

I liked the short, random-ish nature of the exercise. It made for an attainable goal.

My concern is that it would be too vague to help you get started.

But I thought the restriction on dialog would bring out the environmental descriptions, and give some incentive to practice setting a scene.

I thought it was interesting that both you and Matt told stories with just one person. That makes omitting the dialog easier, I guess.

I'll be honest, I didn't really think about the dialogue aspect at all.

I really liked the way your story progressed @Mr.Shiny. I agree with @Matt that it sort of sneaks up on you, just like the ivy.

@KitFox Thanks! But I did have to stretch the 2-paragraph limit a tad.

That's OK. You were writing, that's the point.

I liked @Matt's surreal setting too. It made what could be very normal (planting a bulb) into something weird. I want to know more about that world with the man and the mosaic.

@kitfox a little bit more of a try at something substantial: someonelikeme42.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/writing-exercize-1

@KitFox yeah, me too. I found it telling that the setting is unusual, and yet not uinrealistic (ok, some kind of architecture, pillars, fine) but the guy with seeming modern gear (beer cans?) is muttering incantations while planting a mundane flower in an odd place.

@KitFox, That's unfortunate! OK, so... Tulips! I like the white ones... I'll see if I can get something done quickly. This is another one; shorter and doesn't presume any knowledge of other works.

I won't be back for another 30 minutes; duty calls ;)

@DForck42 Yowza. Nice foray into darkening...I think your transition from innocence to horror could be more emphatic if you smoothed it out a bit. I'd like to see a slower build to your reveal.

@KitFox yeah, i reread it and noticed that the transition is pretty huge

But I dig the angle. Your set-up of this innocent child's beloved things is a good plan.

@KitFox I agree. It's a good reminder and a good metaphor, because tulips don't last that long (although they are perennial... probably an annual would work better but then it wouldn't fit the exercise)

Also, to slow it down, I'd suggest that rather than "because of my stupid actions that I took to bring down this entire system" you might use something more vague and mysterious like "because I sent a memo to the wrong people." That way, you don't tell us the ending of the story right at the beginning.

hmm. updated it a little bit, broke it into two paragraphs.

That's a better transition.

so, are you working on figuring out the next exercize?

I was thinking about a straight up dialog. Nothing but dialog.

Except for the "she said" and "he asked" kind of stuff.

It looks like we could all use it.

Do you have an idea?

@KitFox i'm horrible at dialog, so sounds like a good idea to me

OK. What should we add for condiments then?

pants

tacos

and... a xilophone

No xylophones.

Let's not get silly.

damn!

Glockenspiel?

:P

@KitFox i do silly very well...

Well, you can make your dialog silly.

ehh, it'll probably come out dark again

So aside from motivating us to write, which this exercise succeeded at doing, is there any other purpose? criticism,etc?

I don't know. Practice.

Do you want criticism?

Sure

all of the above

I hate to admit that I'm being hand-wavy about it, but I'm just making it up as I go along.

That's fair.

I made up my story as I went along :)

But I'd hate to practice writing stuff that people ultimately found boring or unpleasant and nobody told me

If we do critiques, then we should probably select just one or two or spend a lot of time doing it. And maybe people should just ask if they want critiquing?

@KitFox on yours i will say that the nail just came out of nowhere (literally)

Well, I'm open to criticism of these exercises all the time. I will do my best not to take it personally.

@DForck42 Yeah, I know. It was a surprise to me too.

as long as someone doesn't say "wow, that's horrible, you deserve to die" i'm pretty open

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK, well, let me look at yours again and see what else I might suggest.

@DForck42 I'd suggest changing the tense in some of your sentences

> It was obvious that the little girl cared for the tulip.

I think it should be "had cared"

so "It was obvious that th elittle girl hd cared for the tulip"

@DForck42 yeah. Since she isn't caring for it anymore, presumably.

Oh @Mr.Shiny, I remember one thing that I was going to suggest...you have a lot of parentheticals. I like the style it adds, kind of chatty and distracted, but it seems like too many.

Just a few too many. Or maybe the spacing...?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 true

@KitFox yeah. I played with it a bit. It is intentional, but I'm not sure if I struck the right balance. Ultimately I stopped tweaking it and just published it. :)

It is better with the improved punctuation.

At least, I think you added some colons and semi-colons since I read it the first time.

@KitFox I may have. There were a couple awkward sentences I reworded.

It reads well. Easier than I remember it from the first go-round, but that might be because I've read it four times now.

Other than that, I don't have any suggestions. It is a nice little short story.

@MetaEd Were you going to share some writing with us?

Ok, I have completed the exercise.

Post it here?

Yes, please.

Also, do you want critiquing?

Sure. Puts on thick skin

Falling In Love

She was fading now, she knew. She was a little bowed over, her spangled skirt had developed creases, her powder had begun to cake up. But, oh, how the others had fought for her attention! Well, her boys were prone to hyperbole, and she was not sure how to credit their stories. She herself had met none of her lovers. But her boys had told her there were none to rival her.

He lay still beneath her, waiting. He remembered the three times before. Wordlessly she had sprung up out of the cold and the wet, dropped one garment after another, curled up near him, and then blown away. He yearned to stab into her, hold her close, he whose strength had once bound trees together. But now he was wasting away, too weak to hang on to anything.

--

Aww...

That's really sweet.

I don't have any critique for that. It's lovely.

how about "doesn't go anywhere" :-)

Doesn't need to. It stands on its own.

Where's the rusty nail? the tulip? :)

Tulip = paragraph 1.

Rusty nail = paragraph 2.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Kit gets it.

ah

nice

@MetaEd do you have a blog you can post it on?

@KitFox I could do that.

Just to keep the exercises together. Just if you want.

@MattЭллен are you here now?

ohai :)

I was catching up

Hi @Matt!

I haven't read DForck42's yet

Oh, right. I was going to re-read that as well.

Dark, very dark

@MattЭллен :-D

@MattЭллен if you want dark, read the other one on my blog

It's difficult to write dark and broody.

Keeping an appropriate level of intensity is hard.

Readers get tired out.

@kitfox my first attempts at exercize #2 someonelikeme42.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/writing-exercize-two

@DForck42 guffaw

@KitFox metaed.blogspot.com/2012/07/…

@MetaEd Oh, it reads even better in that font!