In this thread, we discuss my ideas for writing a novel.

James bond, the bookmaker · Tue Jun 24, 2003 6:30 pm

My mind has a really strange way of (A) stringing a bunch of seemingly-unrelated details together into a thought process taht other people would find completely insane, and (B) laching onto completely random thoughts for no good reason. So one day I was walking downtown when it began to get so rainy that I was fairly sure that a thunderstorm would soon follow. i mean, it went from pree-sunset glow to almost completely fucking dark in like fifteen minutes. That shit is extreeeeemme. (for the record, a thunderstorm did not occur, much to my intense disappointment--where I live they are uncommon to the point of being freak weather events.) I began thinking of the Stephen King short story "The Mist". You may have heard of it. It is in the short story collection "Skeleton Crew", along with "The Monkey" and "The raft" and "silver bullet" and other horrendously-disturbing tales, and has been published on its own as well as made into a radio play that was actually not bad if you ignore the fact that the swear words are completely removed ("the windows are just plate glass." "holy sh... we'd better go get Norton." "ho, sheesus! Up to last week we had those barbecue lighters!") which i am willing to ignore--its radio, for gods sake--and the incredibly commical way the characters are compelled to describe the creatures they're about to get killed by to no one ("certainly not an ordinary spider its something larger not, maybe, maybe not even a spider at all--aaah! Aaaah Aaaaaaahhhhh!!") which I am not willing to ignore. Anyway, its about a group of people who got trapped in a grocery store after a bank of unrealistically-impenitrable fog encloses them in one day after a big storm. But this is not normal fog, of course. Oh no, *this* is *monster-generating* fog. Inside the treacherous mist roam gigantic spiders the size of dogs (Nemesis flashback! PJ FLASHBACK! AAAAIAAUUUAAGGHHH!!), tiny insectile pink wormlike things, huge pteradactle-like bird things with leathery wings (said leathery wings, i believe, get approximately six lines more description than the main character's wife), huge tentacles that leadd to god alone knows where and have acidic suckers--like the acid in the spiderwebs, huge things with six legs the heighth of telephone poles with a bunch of the pink things (TM) clinging to them, and many more that aren't mentioned. They also seem to be hanging around the store for unknown reasons, as whenever someone ventures outside they are attacked by no less than five whole minutes (and I'm talkin' at *most* here, folks). Also, the power is out due to the afore-mentioned storm. This is good because the automatic doors ("these stupid automatic doors, I thought they were automatic!") politely refuse to open for the creatures, and bad because a lot of the food there is spoiling. If you're curious (which you're not), the main character ends up gathering up a group of "hard-bitten survivors" (I.E: not the ones who refuse to believe the stories of weird creatures (they are killed within the first fifteen minutes, "nach"), the religeous nuts, the Screaming Useless Bitches (TM)) including the store manager, the main character, the main character's kid, the main character's swiftly-discovered banger (he does her on the first, possibly second, night. Jesus *Christ*.), a guy with a shotgun in his trunk, an elderly woman (but this is the actually useful kind of old lady--the kind that will break your arm three times if you look at her wrong), the assistant manager of the store who somehow manages to be the best shot in the store ("I did a little target shooting in Nam.") and probably a couple others I forgot make a break for the main character's car. They make it, of course, and go to the main characters home--oops, the road's been blocked by trees! Guess the wife's gone, time to bang Amanda! Twitch. So they start heading south, the end, haw haw. But I digress. I started thinking "what would it be like to be stuck in a farmacy or a grocery store? I mean, how could you consider it to be a bad thing? The main staple and motivation that gets characters to move out of their safe hiding place and get severely fucked over in survival horror, food and drink and a place to sleep, are well taken care of. And unless the store manager was a complete and total loser dickhead prick, it'd probably be something along the lines of "free coke for all! W00t!" And, while thus absorbed in this thought pattern, (I was walking under the overhanging roof of the buildings to avoid the rain) I promptly ran smack dab into a big-ass post used to hold up the roof. Something about the stining *smack* of the hit gave me the at the time highly amusing image that the post had just smacked me. This vanished instantly, replaced by a bit of thought "... if that builging was alive, that post would be *perfect* for a foot it could use to punt people, cars, small buildings..." And, of course, I ran into another post. A long and quite possibly crowd-pleasing flood of profanity, naturally, ensued. But that is beside the point. I started thinking "Wouldn't it *totally fucking rock* if, somehow, a building that was going to be torn down to make way for a housing development became sencient, and not being oh so fond of the idea, decided to rip itself out of its own foundation and storm in a richeously pissed manner down to the local zoning office and start with some puntin', Godzilla-style, completely obliterating everything in its path?" My response to this question was a resounding "*yes*." Your milage may vary. Thus, II decided to make a book with that at the end of it. A couple weeks later I was watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (King Dinosaur, if you're interested, which of course your not) and during the fifteen-minute long safety film that was being made fun of, which existed of a car driver getting put on trial by god after he got in a car accident and died and is goofily obsurd, I started thinking in my warped way... what if hell, although its terrible and evil and in general a not nice people to be, wasn't all it was cracked up to be as far as enforcement and security was concerned? Who *says* that the devil is in fact a huge demon with... leathery wings..., a forked tongue (that basteech is *so* ripping off Revenger, muthafuckeh), and can breathe fire out of his nostrels? What if he's a slightly pompous and overweight, but other than that, perfectly normal demon who just happens to be The Man (TM)? What if, in short, Hell was designed much like a present-day office block, with a whole bunch of "lesser demons" running around, doing the devil's bidding, and all of that "I am the manj who can singlehandedly torch the entire world, assjacks!" is simply devil PR designed to make you not attack him? I mean, if you knew that Hell was a well-organized and heavily-fortified area but with one man at the top, you would want to organize and defeat him, whereas if you think that the devil is one man who can basically do whatever the fuck he wants to, Timmy, you seriously do not want to fuck with the guy. So, as my brain continued to rationalize, he has a bunch of his lesser demons go, taking whatever shape they will including none at all, into the world and causing a certain quota of "bad things" (TM) to happen. Certain kinds of catastrophes give more "points" than others, therefore an earthquake that makes the rictor scale yell "What's the point anymore!!!" and self-destruct will be far more valuable than, say, a car crash.. If the demon fails to meet his quota someone else will have to take up his slack and perform *more* evil deeds than he normally would have to, which makes the other demons mad at the first one that they had to work harder, and thus the code is enforced. A couple details I thought up: this explains how (no facts can back this up but bare with me) there were no car crashes or tornados durring the Vietnam War. The demon running the war was doing such a good job that the others basically said "aw screw this, I'm takin' a day off" until the Vietnam war guy got richeously pissed about the whole afair and ended it so he could finally get some goddamn piece.
The demons, if they wish to be seen, will take the form of a busness executive/polititian (sharkskin suit, flinty eyes, you know the look). This is ue to a careful studdy of today's culture. Demons, no matter how they try, can't quite get the whole human appearance thing down quite right; there's always an aura around them that makes people uneasy. Therefore, since they can't hide it they cammoflage the effect by taking a slightly-unsettling form, ergo anyone off-put by their aura of wrong will think "he's a polititian, that's why I get this instinctive feeling not to trust him."
A *nother* few weeks later, I suddenly and for no reason at all that I can come up with got the sudden image of an elivator saying "Level, five. Now, get the fuck out of my elivator!", the floor under the hapless travolor heaving upwards and throwing him out into the hallway.
Then, like an orgasm... IT HAPPENED!! [disclaimer: the following and proceeding post is nothing more than a highly-disguised excuse to use the previous phrase. Thank you.] I was trying to figure out how to actually write this shit into a story, wheen I got the crazy idea "Why don't you combine them?"
So, I've now got the idea that a demon, in one of his "evil acts", telepathically inserts the instructions for how to give an innanimate object "life" (and not undead life, but a real personality) to some highly-distraught guy, who decides for whatever reason that he wants to hex the hotel he's somehow involved in building, and promptly does so. (this is because one of the few rules that everyone is forced to abide by is that you simply do not fuck around with free will.) Hilarity, naturally, ensues. But, yet again, I ran into that metaforical brick wall yet *again*. Because, quite frankly, I don't have a plot. I've got several ideas, and I've got a premise that I think could work, but I have no fucking clue whatsoever what to do with it.
So...
Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything? Anything at all? Hellooooo? Pleeeeease?

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 7:04 pm

Well, um, I guess I can add that I've been meaning to do a review of all the Angelsoft/Mindscape text games at once for several months now, and one of those games would be Stephen King's own adaption of "The Mist." It was one of the better ones I've played so far.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 7:21 pm

James bond, the bookmaker wrote: So... Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything? Anything at all? Hellooooo? Pleeeeease?

Er, hitting the "return" key twice after a paragraph would be good, for starters. Honk honk honk!

Actually, I just got finished editing your X-Men review for tomorrow, so I feel I am uniquely qualified to answer this question of yours. I've got to burn through a few other things tonight, but I will get back to you on this one, bud.

Simon Cowel · Post by **Simon Cowel** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 7:31 pm

Why, God! Why! I don't understand it! YOU! Your grammar--pathetic! And how about your *idea*, huh? Boy, you don't even *want* me to go into your *idea*. Let me guess, you're a no-good, tallentless hack who's 12 years old and has an AOL account, right? Well here's something to tell you, and I'll put it in idiotspeak and in capital letters so you can understand it: *F00K* *J00!11`!!~1`12`11~1~!1`*

Thank you and good night, ladies and gents.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Tue Jun 24, 2003 7:49 pm

That wasn't me, by the way.

James Bond · Post by **James Bond** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 3:57 pm

Another idea I had back when was that some guy manages to create a device that can peer into the human brain. As a matter of fact, it actually allows you to move around inside of it. The thing creates a virtual reality matrix around you and the person, and makes a virtual reprisentation of the brain for you to walk around in. Since every brain is different, and everyone thinks differently, the background of the brain will be different for everyone as the device makes them as close to what the real life equivelent would be. Take an example: if you tapped into the brain of a computer nerd, you'd be sitting at a computer. The files on it would be the person's experiences and memories. If the person was a librarian, then the brain-machine would transport you into a library, where the books were the life experiences. If the person was big on CD burning, the place would make Stephen Hawking retire to a monistary, and the various CDs lying around would reprisent that person's life experiences. If the person liked clubbing, then the result would be something like the bar in Chicks Dig Jerks, only without price tags. The people on the dancefloors would reprisent the life experiences (you could talk to them and they'd all have one memory that they would share with you). You get the idea, hopefully. I wasn't sure on the size, wheter it was a huge aparatus-like thing or something small enough to carry around/conceal and aim at people. I was thinking that somehow two people would be chasing each other around in each other's/other people's heads. Another unrelated idea I had just to end a novel with was some assassin being killed and then waking up in hell. But hell is different for every person. In this case, he has to meet all of his victems. I was thinking the guy murdered a lot of pros for some reason or another, and when he showed up he'd see them walking out from around a corner one by one by one, and they'd surround him, and then one would walk up to him, smile sexily, and stabb him in the eyes with a knife.
Discuss! Now! Assholes! ^_-

Worm · Post by **Worm** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 4:59 pm

Try calling yourself an author.

bot · Post by **bot** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 9:22 pm

In point of fact, James, the fact that you have read more than one book by Stephen King - and, moreover, the fact that you cite him as some kind of authority - disqualifies you from being an author.

Seriously, though, I would think someone who was aspiring to be a writer would spend more time actually writing than horse-pucking their ideas around a forum full of smart-asses. You do know what Freud says about artists who display their unfinished work, don't you?

Debaser · Post by **Debaser** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 9:29 pm

bot wrote:You do know what Freud says about artists who display their unfinished work, don't you?

Does it involve having sex with your mother in any way, shape, or form?

Note that I'm not referencing the Oedipal complex here; I'm saying I want to have sex with your mother.

And by "you" I mean whomever is reading this post currently.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 10:09 pm

I want Debaser to have sex with my mother as well.

What did Freud say about artists who display their unfinished work?

bot · Post by **bot** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 10:13 pm

He said it was the very form of the child who proudly displays his/her feces to his/her parents, and seeks approval for said production.

Roody_Yogurt · Post by **Roody_Yogurt** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 10:20 pm

I think Freud was just playa-hating because his shitting skillz were so wack. I very much doubt that he would have excelled in our very own gay scat porn month.

poop_4_u · Post by **poop_4_u** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 11:28 pm

bot wrote:He said it was the very form of the child who proudly displays his/her feces to his/her parents, and seeks approval for said production.

hey, any1 else used to do that?

scatmandu · Post by **scatmandu** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 11:33 pm

*raises hand*

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 7:56 pm

A couple weeks later I was watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (King Dinosaur, if you're interested, which of course your not)

One of my favorites.

perhaps you should actually write a twenty page plot synopsys instead of free forming all over the place with Stephen King short stories ( some of his shorts could be called long johns) and get tho the point of the novel. then write a first draft here (make up a base Jonesy!) so we could ridicule you into psycotherapy and/or grammar class.

remind me to post the first draft of a Walter Gibson novel that I improved upon. It's quite funny. Bet nobody ever heard of him.

THE
LURKING IN THE
AARDVARK

James Bond · Post by **James Bond** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 12:23 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
James bond, the bookmaker wrote: So... Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything? Anything at all? Hellooooo? Pleeeeease?
Er, hitting the "return" key twice after a paragraph would be good, for starters. Honk honk honk!

Actually, I just got finished editing your X-Men review for tomorrow, so I feel I am uniquely qualified to answer this question of yours. I've got to burn through a few other things tonight, but I will get back to you on this one, bud.

..................
James Bond "I'm a bumper! I have no shame!" *cries into a handkerchief*

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 12:35 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Er, hitting the "return" key twice after a paragraph would be good, for starters.

I realize you can't edit your post as you entered it in as a guest, but do me a favor and post it again in this thread and reformat it for me. I'm not trying to big time you, it just gets very difficult to read over a giant blorb of text like that.

Also, what kind of feedback are you looking for?

(In addition, I am this close to getting a new computer game into final beta test, so the time I've been able to grab for the BBS has been low and probably will be low until I get the thing finished up. Hopefully the benefits the new game brings to the table makes up for my silence during this stretch.)

James Bond · Post by **James Bond** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 1:00 am

Okay, I understand, I was just bringing it up, 'sall. As for feedback, well, I really am not picky. I'm basically looking for something that could actually kickstart the *plot* of the story. I've got a zillion gimmics, but no plot to tie them in with. Oh, and see post #5 for more ideas of mine, if you please.

My mind has a really strange way of (A) stringing a bunch of seemingly-unrelated details together into a thought process that other people would find completely
insane, and laching onto completely random thoughts for no good reason. So one day I was walking downtown when it began to get so rainy that I was
fairly sure that a thunderstorm would soon follow. I mean, it went from pree-sunset glow to almost completely fucking dark in like fifteen minutes. That
shit is extreeeeemme. (for the record, a thunderstorm did not occur, much to my intense disappointment--where I live they are uncommon to the point of
being freak weather events.)

I began thinking of the Stephen King short story "The Mist". You may have heard of it. It is in the short story collection
"Skeleton Crew", along with "The Monkey" and "The raft" and "silver bullet" and other horrendously-disturbing tales, and has been published on its own
as well as made into a radio play that was actually not bad if you ignore the fact that the swear words are completely removed ("the windows are just plate
glass." "holy sh... we'd better go get Norton." "ho, sheesus! Up to last week we had those barbecue lighters!") which i am willing to ignore--its radio,
for gods sake--and the incredibly commical way the characters are compelled to describe the creatures they're about to get killed by to no one ("certainly
not an ordinary spider its something larger not, maybe, maybe not even a spider at all--aaah! Aaaah Aaaaaaahhhhh!!") which I am not willing to ignore.

Anyway, its about a group of people who got trapped in a grocery store after a bank of unrealistically-impenitrable fog encloses them in one day after
a big storm. But this is not normal fog, of course. Oh no, *this* is *monster-generating* fog. Inside the treacherous mist roam gigantic spiders the size
of dogs (Nemesis flashback! PJ FLASHBACK! AAAAIAAUUUAAGGHHH!!), [... Don't ask. *DON'T* *ASK*.] tiny insectile pink wormlike things, huge pteradactle-like bird things with leathery wings
(said leathery wings, I believe, get approximately six lines more description than the main character's wife), huge tentacles that leadd to god alone knows
where and have acidic suckers--like the acid in the spiderwebs, huge things with six legs the heighth of telephone poles with a bunch of the pink things
(TM) clinging to them, and many more that aren't mentioned. They also seem to be hanging around the store for unknown reasons, as whenever someone ventures
outside they are attacked in no less than five whole minutes (and I'm talkin' at *most* here, folks). Also, the power is out due to the afore-mentioned
storm. This is good because the automatic doors ("these stupid automatic doors, I thought they were automatic!") politely refuse to open for the creatures,
and bad because a lot of the food there is spoiling. If you're curious (which you're not), the main character ends up gathering up a group of "hard-bitten
survivors" (I.E: not the ones who refuse to believe the stories of weird creatures (they are killed within the first fifteen minutes, "nach"), the religeous
nuts, the Screaming Useless Bitches (TM)) including the store manager (who refuses to leave the store--talk about dedication. Jesus.), the main character, the main character's kid, the main character's swiftly-discovered
banger (he does her on the first, possibly second, night. Jesus *Christ*. "I've seen a pile of those sleeping pallots in the manager's office. Its empty. There's a lock on the door. Whaaaat? I saw you looking at me like that..." *twitchtwitch*), a guy with a shotgun in his trunk, an elderly woman (but this is the actually
useful kind of old lady--the kind that will break your arm three times if you look at her wrong), the assistant manager of the store who somehow manages
to be the best shot in the store ("I did a little target shooting in Nam.") and probably a couple others I forgot make a break for the main character's
car. They make it, of course, and go to the main characters home--oops, the road's been blocked by trees! Guess the wife's gone, time to bang Amanda! Twitch, TWITCH.
So they start heading south, the end, haw haw. But I digress.

I started thinking "what would it be like to be stuck in a farmacy or a grocery store? I
mean, how could you consider it to be a bad thing? The main staple and motivation that gets characters to move out of their safe hiding place and get severely
fucked over in survival horror, food and drink and a place to sleep, are well taken care of. And unless the store manager was a complete and total loser
dickhead prick, it'd probably be something along the lines of "free coke for all! W00t!"

And, while thus absorbed in this thought pattern, (I was walking
under the overhanging roof of the buildings to avoid the rain) I promptly ran smack dab into a big-ass post used to hold up the roof. Something about the
stinging *smack* of the hit gave me the at the time a highly amusing image that the post had just bitchslapped me. This vanished instantly, replaced by a bit of
thought "... if that building was alive, that post would be *perfect* for a foot it could use to punt people, cars, small buildings..." And, of course,
I ran into another post. A long and quite possibly crowd-pleasing flood of profanity, naturally, ensued. But that is beside the point. I started thinking
"Wouldn't it *totally fucking rock* if, somehow, a building that was going to be torn down to make way for a housing development became sencient, and not
being oh so fond of the idea, decided to rip itself out of its own foundation and storm in a richeously pissed manner down to the local zoning office and
start with some puntin', Godzilla-style, completely obliterating everything in its path?" My response to this question was a resounding "*yes*." Your milage
may vary. Thus, I decided to make a book with that at the end of it.

A couple weeks later I was watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (King
Dinosaur, if you're interested, which of course your not) and during the fifteen-minute long safety film that was being made fun of, which existed of a
car driver getting put on trial by god after he got in a car accident and died and is goofily obsurd, I started thinking in my warped way... what if hell,
although its terrible and evil and in general a not nice place to be, wasn't all it was cracked up to be as far as enforcement and security was concerned?

Who *says* that the devil is in fact a huge demon with... leathery wings..., a forked tongue (that basteech is *so* ripping off Revenger, muthafuckeh),
and can breathe fire out of his nostrels? What if he's a slightly pompous and overweight, but other than that, perfectly normal demon who just happens
to be The Man (TM)? What if, in short, Hell was designed much like a present-day office block, with a whole bunch of "lesser demons" running around, doing
the devil's bidding, and all of that "I am the manj who can singlehandedly torch the entire world, assjacks!" is simply devil PR designed to make you not
attack him? I mean, if you knew that Hell was a well-organized and heavily-fortified area but with one man at the top, you would want to organize and defeat
him, whereas if you think that the devil is one man who can basically do whatever the fuck he wants to, Timmy, you seriously do not want to fuck with the
guy.

So, as my brain continued to rationalize, he has a bunch of his lesser demons go, taking whatever shape they will including none at all, into the
world and causing a certain quota of "bad things" (TM) to happen. Certain kinds of catastrophes give more "points" than others, therefore an earthquake
that makes the rictor scale yell "What's the point anymore!!!" and self-destruct will be far more valuable than, say, a car crash. If the demon fails
to meet his quota someone else will have to take up his slack and perform *more* evil deeds than he normally would have to, which makes the other demons
mad at the first one that they had to work harder, and thus the code is enforced. A couple details I thought up: this explains how (no facts can back this
up but bare with me) there were no car crashes or tornados durring the Vietnam War. The demon running the war was doing such a good job that the others
basically said "aw screw this, I'm takin' a day off" until the Vietnam war guy got verry verry pissed about the whole afair and ended it so he could finally
get some goddamn piece.

The demons, if they wish to be seen, will take the form of a busness executive/polititian (sharkskin suit, flinty eyes, you know the look). This is ue to
a careful studdy of today's culture. Demons, no matter how they try, can't quite get the whole human appearance thing down quite right; there's always
an aura around them that makes people uneasy. Therefore, since they can't hide it they cammoflage the effect by taking a slightly-unsettling form, ergo
anyone off-put by their aura of wrong will think "he's a polititian, that's why I get this instinctive feeling not to trust him."

A *nother* few weeks later, I suddenly and for no reason at all that I can come up with got the sudden image of an elivator saying "Level, five. Now, get
the fuck out of my elivator!", the floor under the hapless travolor heaving upwards and throwing him out into the hallway.

Then, like an orgasm... IT HAPPENED!! [disclaimer: the following and proceeding post is nothing more than a highly-disguised excuse to use the previous
phrase. Thank you.] I was trying to figure out how to actually write this shit into a story, wheen I got the crazy idea "Why don't you combine them?"

So, I've now got the idea that a demon, in one of his "evil acts", telepathically inserts the instructions for how to give an inanimate object "life" (and
not undead life, but a real personality) to some highly-distraught guy, who decides for whatever reason that he wants to hex the hotel he's somehow involved
in building, and promptly does so. (this is because one of the few rules that everyone is forced to abide by is that you simply do not fuck around with
free will.) Hilarity, naturally, ensues. But, yet again, I ran into that metaforical brick wall yet *again*. Because, quite frankly, I don't have a plot.

I've got several ideas, and I've got a premise that I think could work, but I have no fucking clue whatsoever what to do with it.

So...

Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything? Anything at all? Hellooooo? Pleeeeease?

...I'm done! I'm done! Yee-motherfucking-haw! ...Ahem.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 1:37 am

James Bond wrote:My mind has a really strange way of (A) stringing a bunch of seemingly-unrelated details together into a thought process that other people

OK, first off, you don't want to do a list like that unless you have a B, C and D available.

laching

Also, definitely spell-check your work before sending it out. If you have a word shift that a spell-checker doesn't catch that's one thing and that's what editors or for, but you're going to want to make sure that non-words are properly caught.

I mean, it went from pree-sunset glow to almost completely fucking dark in like fifteen minutes. That shit is extreeeeemme. (for the record, a thunderstorm did not occur, much to my intense disappointment--where I live they are uncommon to the point of being freak weather events.)

A word other than 'fucking' would probably serve you better here when describing how dark it got. Additionally, you'll soon find out that in writing, getting characters into a completely dark and isolated location is a dime per dozen. Ask yourself some questions about what the night was like -- one of the best descriptions of night I've ever read came from a Batman comic, actually. The word "filthy" was used. That little word alone spoke volumes about how it was. Growing up in Rochester we'd actually get nights like that -- calling a night out like that implies that it was wet, that the ground was muddy, that debris was floating around the air... and that's just from one word, albeit a word which has a meaning, unlike 'fucking' in the above. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for swearing and cursing where appropriate, but I don't think it was appropriate here.

Also, I think you'd be better off if you didn't spell words like 'extreme' up above with extra letters. You're tryin to get the reader interested in your character here, and I don't think that quite does it.

Lastly, you want to capitalize the word "for" in the parenthesis there. You did get the punctuation correct, though, which is nice.

OK, waitasec, I just read through the rest of this again -- is this prose here, or are you just talking about your idea as a whole? I was under the impression that this was the start of a book, for instance. Argh, I misunderstood you here. OK, let me re-read this.

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 3:11 pm

Hey, Robb, did you manage to get a picture for shameless bumping that I can use? Just curious.

In this thread, we discuss my ideas for writing a novel.

In this thread, we discuss my ideas for writing a novel.

Re: In this thread, we discuss my ideas for writing a novel.

Oh! And! And and and and and!