Discussion - December 2011 - 75 Word Challenge

[Jo Zebedee]

Plan C sounds more accesible. Maybe.

 

[Ursa major]

Whereas I'm already all at sea.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Hopefully on a steamboat

 

[paranoid marvin]

Oh buoy

 

[Ursa major]

Anyways, I'll soon be up the creek without a paddle steamer.

 

[alchemist]

I'm sorry, everyone. I'm really sorry.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

About what? Nobody's getting steamed over you, alchemist.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Contrary to plumbing the depths, this thread is now pure gold...

 

[Ursa major]

And alchemist lead us there.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

And let's not make it a place to vent.

 

[Starbeast]

Great collection of stories for the first day of December. These tales remind me of the time I spent reading holiday issues of Warren Magazines, like Eerie, Creepy etc. back in the seventies and eighties.

I chuckle at the image Mith put into my head. I can see Santa strolling up to Rudolf.

"Rudolf."

"Yes Santa."

"Do me a favor."

"Sure Santa, anything for you."

"Hold still...." (boom)

 

[reiver33]

I don't usually comment on the challenges but I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the entry from Hex.

To a certain degree 'Steampunk' gives a name to a field of literature with a strong heritage in British SFF. I discovered Moorcock – e.g. 'The Final Program' and 'The Dancers At The Edge Of Time' - as an impressionable teenager (which may explain a lot). This isn't a genre I've tried before as I felt anything would come over as too derivative, but I've always enjoyed its pseudo-retrospective richness of expression.

Now I must go, as I'm due aboad the torpedo-ram Thunderchild...

P.S. For me, 4:30 am is the middle of the afternoon as I work nights. In a former mental institution now converted to Council offices...

 

[Starbeast]

To a certain degree 'Steampunk' gives a name to a field of literature with a strong heritage in British SFF.

Interesting. My first encounters with "steampunk" was in 1960's tv show Wild,Wild West. I was glued to the tv watching that show as a kid. I watch an episode now-and-then when I can.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

In a former mental institution

Careful of the ghosts, Reiver. No telling how angry they might be after whatever tortures had occurred.

 

[hopewrites]

somewhere in Oregon they redid an old mental hospital into a resort/ health spa. it always makes me laugh to think about it because some where in some book or something so fuzzy in my past i cant remember where i remember it from there is a reference to saying one's crazy relation is "away at a health spa" when they are institutionalized.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Yeah, I think I heard about that once. I just can't remember where.


And besides, if you want a true "spa style" in Oregon, full good treatment, perhaps minus the massage, there are hot springs one can go to. (Of course, one hot springs has a very narrow, dangerous trail leading to it, and that was quite scary to hike.) It has the heat, the natural minerals, and it was nude-friendly, the one I went to. Of course I was eleven at the time, and not so liberal as I am today.


But I think I'll stop there.



I don't know if December will be seeing any Karn-based reviews, but I think January will. If I don't get sick again.

 

[hopewrites]

the one i heard about was at a hot springs.

Just finished sketching out my story, going to go over it for more then content this time. my grammar editor seems to think i have a lot of fragmented sentences and i'm over by a word or twelve.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

ALWAYS hand count your words, HW. And by the way-words that are hyphenated but usually used separately, (in example, my entry, with "steam-powered") the mods will count those as multiples as your word checker will count them as singular.


Ask The Judge or TE or Culhwch what hyphenated words they'll count as singular. But always hand count, and always err on the side of caution with hyphenated words and count each piece as its own singular word.



Oh, and don't rely on your computer's grammar checker-it counts every little violation every time because it's a linear machine. Fragmented sentences can often be effective when used correctly and are natural when orally speaking.


This. Is not. A good example. Though.


I think rule of thumb states that every sentence needs to have at minimum a subject and a verb to be considered a full sentence? "He ran." That is a full sentence. Not very stimulating, but full. "He ran down the street" is a better example, but for action packed, "He ran down the street as the man driving a car behind him gunned the motor" would make quite an exhilarating image. (Actually, it already is, for me....)

 

[hopewrites]

quite. I'm not used to writing over, I think i'll sleep on what i have (hoping that doesnt give me nightmares) and come back at it in the morning. its the fragments that have me worried.

 

[odangutan]

Odangutan – Well Ursa guests in a previous story and now we have mouse, although I’m not sure she would like her apparent fate here! As a whole the story works very well, it took me a moment to realise the protagonist is/was a mouse, which works to the benefit of the tale; while the opening line is so deliciously sinister it radiates a chill. Another excellent tale.

I didn't think of the protagonist as an actual mouse, as it happens. I just imagined that a cat, even a mechanical burglar-murdering cat, would think of all prey as a mouse.

Your reading works, though, and shows how stories are completed simply once they're written down.

ALWAYS hand count your words, HW. And by the way-words that are hyphenated but usually used separately, (in example, my entry, with "steam-powered") the mods will count those as multiples as your word checker will count them as singular.

The journalist style guide for the magazine I write for states that words which are hyphenated validly count as single words and they're VERY strict on wordcount.

If hyphenated words sometimes are counted as their individual elements for purposes of wordcount then that should be outlined in the rules.