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Author Topic: Random musings.
Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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Now, let's not get personal here, please!
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Jack Albany
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Personal? I was born in Sydney a very long time ago, I escaped by running away to find a horse, and forty-seven years later I was pressed-ganged into returning. Not that I'm complaining. [Smile]

Mutter, mutter, mutter.

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Robert Nowall
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Happy Thanksgiving, all.
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LDWriter2
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quote:
Originally posted by Robert Nowall:
Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Wondering if anyone would leave Happy Thanksgiving wishes. I do so too even though they will be late for some of you all


Happy Thanksgiving

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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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quote:
Originally posted by Robert Nowall:
Happy Thanksgiving, all.

Thank you, and same to you, Robert.
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Robert Nowall
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I pronounce a curse on AOL and all its evil works.

Yesterday I found they alphabetized my "favorite places" folder. This morning I found it won't let me drag anything out of alphabetical order.

This last month they introduced new versions and discontinued old versions---and the new versions are inferior and awkward to use.

Time to push on, I guess.

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extrinsic
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A whole, brave new net world of opportunity and malfeasance operates outside of AOL's "walled garden" operations. Never an AOL consumer, my biggest AOL disappointment is from people who use AOL for email. Email from AOL users can be delayed from send up to a full day's time, or more, due to batch server processing. That, and AOL's CD fiasco, and acquaintances who encountered strong retention headwinds when they've terminated AOL services. Like AOL would not let them resign the services, as if its consumers were proprietary property, a la bonded servants of a tobacco plantation or feudal estate.

That latter business model has since become a widespread, insidious business practice -- one that holds social science science fiction drama potentials, that of transnational corporate "estates" which "own" their labor staff and consumer folk to the nation state-like exclusion of all other corps, regardless of country boundaries. "Walled garden" indeed, and "company shop." Although -- robber baron monopolies practiced that process earlier, post industrial revolution onset and through the present time, and earlier city-state, feudal estate, and plantation laborer-consumer possession mentality notwithstood. If it has persisted since civilization's dawn, it is a human condition ripe for science fiction and as well satiric redress.

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extrinsic
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Deep investigations today into whether any Unicode contains proofreader marks. Nope. None to speak of separate from ones extant for other purposes -- the space mark, #; the pilcrow, ¶; a caret with insertion point, ⁁ -- and those are it.

Unicode assigned 1,182 code points spread across 33 blocks for emoji, 80 code points for emoticons, all of which are emojis, too, none specific to proofreader marks -- save the three above. Really‽ (Interrobang.) Nor any others to speak of otherwise in word processor symbol typefaces.

A Unicode code point set for proofreader marks is indicated, would amount to a few dozen more marks at most. That would facilitate clear digital proofreading markup, and a handy study aid for writers and editors. What does this shortfall say about mass culture?

One workaround per moi: design a typeface that includes all proofreader mark variants, mark up with it, save, and return to clients in PDF embedded fonts format.

[ December 15, 2017, 02:43 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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LDWriter2
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Hey Merry Christmas to all Here
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Robert Nowall
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Merry Christmas, all.
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tesknota
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Happy holidays, everyone!

Also, does anyone think the forum links have gotten brighter/bluer? Maybe it's just my screen...

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extrinsic
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The web source code writer changed a few CSS style sheet features for the site, link hover, onclick, active, unvisited, and visited color codes, links no longer underlined on hover or onclick, and upgraded the site banner and native image most noticeable. Added an overall Hatrack River drop-down site menu under the banner, too. Someone on high doesn't, apparently, think Hatrack has outworn its usefulness.

[ December 29, 2017, 07:25 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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walexander
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Well my new year is off to a rough start, and it hasn't even begun yet. My good friend and editor had a major stroke, he survived it, thank the heavens, but his days of editing are definitely going on hold for some time.I just checked out a couple of the online services for line and copy editing and almost had a stroke myself at their prices. If I'm going to invest that much I would like to know I'm getting my moneys worth. Anyone got a good referral to a paid editor worth the money for the fantasy genre? Or a company that's top notch? My second manuscript has reached the stage it should leave my hands and go to edit.

It's worth the money if I can find someone that really knows what they're doing, but my time as a journalist has taught me to be careful who you trust in the internet age, especially with that kind of money on the line.

thanks, and happy new year to all,

W.

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extrinsic
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Though editor is my vocation, I cannot in good conscience recommend one, not even myself. The real costs are steep, for one, for writer and editor.

Many who hold out that they are editors are little more than proofreaders and of variant skill levels; many are less than proficient at it, too. Copyeditors generally are of a higher editor skill level than proofreaders, though conflicted by personal sensibilities and limited in scope. Developmental editors are the go-tos since circa the 1990s when many publishers by and large ended in-house editor activities. Those editors, too, though, are conflicted and limited.

Inevitably, unpleasantnesses and heartaches and miscommunications transpire, hence, also crucial for a productive writer-editor relationship are decorum and diplomacy skills of both parties.

My ultimate professional recommendation, and editor career success contradiction, for writers is to self-develop the skills for the self's and the target audience's sensibilities, yet mindful another skilled set of eyes on the pages at several stages is crucial for publication success. This self-initiative saves costs, maybe some of the heartaches, also, and begins with a reference shelf of composition tomes ready to hand and suited to a writer's design and mien, begins, as it all began in grammar school, with grammar, dictionary, style, usage, composition craft mechanics and aesthetics, and canonical texts.

Edited to add: Oh, and best wishes of best outcomes for the editor-friend, and prayers, and for the new editor forages. Maybe what's wanted is a mentor-editor? Next natural step on from developmental editor, as yet not a formal designation, though strong traces of such throughout literature's history.

And happy New Year. This year, for the first time in my long-checkered life, I have a genuine and sincere New Year's resolution. Put my expression arts' resources to productive returns; read: revenue stream enhancements.

[ December 31, 2017, 09:54 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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walexander
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I get you E.

Been working on those skills constantly. It's the part of being too invested that I've have learned many times over now that writers need someone with a hard eye to give the work a critical lookover.

The problem with self-edit is you never really subjectively think about losing those favorite lines, themes, paragraphs. You're standing to close to the work. In some ways you can get similar results from using beta readers, but its hard to replace a professional eye of a good editor who will say, "don't need this, move that to here, you're saying this twice, what's the point of this?"

You're right. I do hear the editor voice in the back of my head more and more, but the jury is still out on if that's a good thing. It tends to put bumps into my first drafts though I try and turn it off.

Well, it's a new year and we're off to the races. I hope this year is a little better than the last.

Cheers everyone, may your dream come true in 2018.

W.

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tesknota
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Sorry about your editor friend, W. Health is really the most important thing. Best wishes for his recovery!

I don't have any experience working with an editor, but my inner editor sure could use some improvement. Maybe I don't give her enough practice. [Razz]

I imagine though that it's very difficult to become a good editor. I'm not very good at improving a piece as a whole; I can find things that are wrong line by line, but I'm not so good at seeing big picture fixes. An editor who can do that would be very valuable and sought after, I think.

Hmm... I would also like some revenue stream enhancements in 2018. Student loans are cramping the rest of my budget! [Big Grin]

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extrinsic
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The muse and the inner editor would do battle like Gaia and Zeus for supremacy of mortal attention, every artists' blessed curse. How then do successful writers manage, even transcend the struggle? Probably many ways unique to each, from utter free association writing and attendant extra eyes on the pages to rigorous preplanning and planning and plan application at each phase of a project, between those extremes, cognitive code switching back and forth from creative to deliberative processes. None of any a binary duality, more so, plus other writing demons and angels and gnomes and mortals, a cornucopia of cacophony every which-a-way loose.

From my years as a working chef, I learned split tasking, not multitasking, not-simultaneous tasking, sequential overlapping tasks performed to a prepared plan. Studies of Digital Age tasking have shown that multitasking results in jobs done okay, with attendant stray distraction influences, too, none done as well as when one task is in sharp focus. Split tasking manages sequenced processes much more effectively and mitigates distractions.

Twelve burner eyes, three ovens, proof boxes, grills, a steamer, salamander, several deep fryers, a few kettles, cold-counter board and appliances and tasks, steam table, fridge, and freezer preps, going episodically and sequentially from start to finish in their due course, from start of shift to end, plan to prep to short order and to plate presentation finish.

The prep work was crucial and planned for the duration, sometimes and some items for the shift, for several shifts, or a longer span. Like onions prepped at one fell swoop for all the shift's preparation stock, soup, sauce, and cold items while the 20-gallon steam-jacket kettle of bouillon heats to a boil, and plan adjustment revisions while so done. Meantime, prepped the shift before, roasts roasted their way through sear and slow-roast cycles, fryers, broilers, grills, and salamanders started, and a 40-pound tuna carcass, quarter-sawn billets cut off, steak-sliced for service proportions beforehand, steams in the box steamer.

How could I use what I learned from cooking for writing? The question was before me long ago, unanswered for a while. From reading the clumsy writing of inexperienced writers, English second language writers, and difficult successful writers' published works, in time, I noted a cognitive code, different from my comfort zone code processes, emerged. No way on Earth and under Heaven could I read past my inner editor's lunges at micro minutia, until I turned that off.

Took a skewed approach, speed reading, in particular, plus, resigned to utter weariness of and disdain for the composition of the moment before me, to shut off the inner editor. Read solely for content, actual intended information imparted, powered once through regardless, engines all ahead full, meantime, took a mental inventory of present and absent and overstocked and short supply items needed to note for adjustment suggestions. Grammar, craft, expression, appeal features from a 7-mile high perspective.

Next, read through and marked or noted repeated grammar error minutia; next, medial range grammar errors, and macro errors, noted discretionaries, too; next, craft's structural and aesthetic mechanics; next, expression's aptitudes; last, matters of intended audience appeals. Then prepared a summary evaluation of the gamut, mindful to variable degrees to note strengths in proportion, mentally self-reported for extant works, typewritten for those in progress, for consumers' sakes, notes spoken aloud from for consumers in person. Over time, fewer read-throughs were needed, two or three at most.

When I've mentored writers, about ninety-four out a hundred approved of my methods. Some, I'm sure, were being most courteous, though were overwhelmed, probably two-thirds. Ones who were sincere showed their grasps and gratitudes in subsequent compositions. The six of a hundred remainder responded resentfully, split about half and half between indictments for poor decorum and diplomacy and otherwise outright viceful spites. The latter ones were often above average writers in the first place. About five out of the six viciously resented that anyone could find fault with their perfections. One of six resented no less, yet grateful anyway. It's a thankless job.

Learn to read other ways than how I had before was the pivot point for shutting off the inner editor -- well, lower the volume at least. Plus, good to have one on the shoulder, the muse atop the other while preplanning, drafting, replanning, rewriting, replanning, revising, and correcting last of all, like the cartoon characters of a demon on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Sometimes the angel acts up, acts out, throws pitiable tantrums, acts the demon, too, and vice versa.

A recent quip about writing and the instruction thereof, while I researched "common fiction writing mistakes," caught my eye, to the effect of, teaching writing, mentoring, really, is showing writers how to read more effectively, differently, too, and closer. Seconded.

In all, though, a plan, plans, really, no matter how rigid or organic, at some phase(s) along the journey, includes study plans for skills and arts enhancements, makes all the difference.

[ January 02, 2018, 11:24 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Robert Nowall
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I've made my first sighting of one of the Statues of Liberty this morning. 'Tis the season.
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LDWriter2
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Oh wow you beat me.
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extrinsic
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Wiener palace and wash-house pub mascot is late this year. The costume last year was threadbare and faded anyway, clean at least. Frigid weather and impassable ice roads delayed the New Year week start this year. Had to pass through uptown myself, for a mandatory medical appointment across the way, and noted wiener-bun-mustard guy barker wasn't out on his first appointed day shift.
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Robert Nowall
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Relatively warm conditions here in Florida. Relative to most of the rest of the country---by Florida standards it's cold. That's why this particular Statue could be out and dancing around.
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walexander
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oddly enough its warm rain here in idaho when we should be in deep snow. same odd thing as last year. east gets buried. north west gets a warmer climate.

odd.

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extrinsic
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Biannual checkup results posted show mild calcium excess and mild, low mean platelet volume, MPV. What? Vitamin D deficiency causes both. A blood D test is indicated though clearer and less intrusively and less costly diagnosed through increased skin exposure to sunlight, tanning lights in an absence thereof, or both. Should have had a D test along with the metabolic and MPV panels. Last winter's checkup showed all three conditions, mild D deficiency, mild high calcium, mild low MPV. Summer's checkup, normal ranges. Different doctor this year.

Winter is on hereabouts, after all, and colder than normal and cabin bound, seasonal affective disorder (SAD, sadness a common symptom) at the extreme end, mild condition, not disorder, though; along with effects from other conditions and treatments that flush D. Insulin-dependent diabetes type II, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and their diuretic conditions and medications' side effects. Another therapeutic home appliance to add to the many. Plus, maybe reduce wintertime decaf beverage consumption. No-caffeine diet already. Recent investigations concluded D supplements provide little, if any, therapeutic benefit. I imbibe plenty. And see more wintertime sun!?

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LDWriter2
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Come to think of it I still haven't seen any cross dressing Statues of Liberty.


The weather hereabouts have been a bit warm. not counting the last two days.


extrinsic, would a sun lamp help?

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extrinsic
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quote:
Originally posted by LDWriter2:
extrinsic, would a sun lamp help?

Yes. Estimates for one run $$$ to $$$$. Bought a full-spectrum lightbulb for the workstation overhead lamp, in other words, a grow light for indoor plants. Mid $. Am I an indoor plant!? We'll see if effective when the next lab panels are done mid-spring. Meantime, see more wintertime sun, too. The doctor isn't overly panicked, nor I.
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LDWriter2
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That last is good

My Father-in-Law had one for his desk, not sure if he used it all that much.


But as to your question. First are you related to the Thing? or to Groot?

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extrinsic
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Some Thing, some Groot, m-mostly M-M-Max Headroom couch -- couch -- couch potato.
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walexander
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Finally broke down and bought the last three wotf anthologies. Curiosity got the better of me.

I've started to reduce my tech intake and go back to simple: Phone over text, typewriter over computer, book over e-reader, cook over take-out, build over buy, music over tv, walk over drive, etc.

I still need tech, but at least I don't have to worry about losing all my data or constant virus scans to my typewriter, and now the new scanners can take the words right off the hard copy and make a word file or pdf if you need it.

This probably is an adverse effect of bartending twice a week and watching customers with their noses in their phones not talking to people right beside them. It's a sad thing to watch, especially the young people who are just completely addicted.

I've seen some of the prototypes of what's coming in the near future and it only looks bleaker for actual one on one interaction.

I'd write a story about it but it has already been done to death.

I guess that's why we are here. To look passed this dystopia and try and imagine a possible path to something brighter or look to the beyond, beyond, and warn of consequences yet unseen.

Peace in the bread-dough yeast. May it rise to the occasion.

W.

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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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I heard someone refer to the addiction you speak of as the "true zombie apocalypse," and I wonder if they might have been correct.
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extrinsic
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Most of the few places I go -- nose people buried in phones. On the road, in stores, sidewalks, grog and coffee and food shops, museums, galleries, receptionists and retail clerks wherever, the rare occasions with kin: phone-nose plants.

Done to death in prose, yes; too direct and on the nose, though. Fantastic fiction's glory next to other genre is non-one-to-one correspondence between a circumstance's superficial substance and representational substance, metaphor-like, extended and situational.

Zonbi? That's about nonconscious response to population overpressure since about the time of George A. Romero's 1968 zonbi cult classic Night of the Living Dead, the signal and seminal artifact of present-day zonbi media. Haitian French: zombi; Haitian Creole: zonbi; West Africa origin: zonbi. Romero's film was part inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 I Am Legend; and part by The Magic Island, W. B. Seabrook, 1929, the overall Western introduction to Haitian vodun zonbi folklore.

Jack Finney's 1954 novel The Body Snatchers and subsequent film Invasion of the Body Snatchers reflect another non-one-to-one facet, that is, of tech obsession-compulsion and accompanied mixed depressive conditions.

The challenge of a tech OCD-bipolar narrative is to transcend what came before and the mediocrity fray of attempts at it. Unfortunately, near-infinite possibilities come to mind. For me, a focus would be, what is it about existential identity crises that influence material consumerism to run amok? Social Insecurity Dysfunction. Tech OCD then becomes secondary, incidental even, yet substantive representational substance motifs for satire. Socially insecure? Meaningfully socialize in person, for Heaven's sake. (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.)

[ January 17, 2018, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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LDWriter2
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quote:
Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:
I heard someone refer to the addiction you speak of as the "true zombie apocalypse," and I wonder if they might have been correct.

They are called tech zombies or phone zombies
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LDWriter2
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quote:
Originally posted by extrinsic:
Some Thing, some Groot, m-mostly M-M-Max Headroom couch -- couch -- couch potato.

Hmm does that mean there is a monster or screen sitting on a couch at your house?
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extrinsic
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Means Network 23 blipverts' spontaneous-detonation victim.
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Jack Albany
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Max headroom is really old-school. Great premise though.
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extrinsic
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Oh-oh-oh-old school? The t-T-TV has taken to blipvert spurt-spurts, and other non sequitur n-n-noises from all and sum-sun-sundry, out of all old-school proportions, enough I feel primed to detonate. Fortunately, a cooler sapient aptitude expects this too might pass before too much harm done. Or the harm is a natural Nature correction response to excess. Both, maybe.
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Robert Nowall
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There has been a noticeable stutter on Fox News lately, when they hand over from one "live" primetime show to another...
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extrinsic
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Rupert Murdoch, age 87, owner of Fox agglomerates, 35th richest person, fell aboard his son's yacht in the Caribbean, hurt his back. Older adults' falls often presage rapid health declines. And Fox News further stutters.
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tesknota
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To fight my tech addiction, I joined a book club. I just read Hitchhiker's Guide again, and the projected book to read for next month is Artemis. It helps to have a reason to pull away from technology!
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telflonmail
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Currently reading Artemis by Andy Weir. Next will be a re-reading of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. Ursula passed away on January 22, 2018 at age of 88.
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LDWriter2
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So I am greatly surprised. No statues at all. A couple of crows however.

I don't if they went out of business, or if they got too many complaints, or if they just decided that the Statues were not helping, ??.

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LDWriter2
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Might be time to reread Earthsea I saw they made a TV show or miniseries out of it?

And I know of Left Hand but can not recall if I read it. That would have been 20 to 30 years ago though.

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Robert Nowall
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The book was better. This is pretty much true of every SF or fantasy book / novel / series that's been made into a movie in the past fifty or sixty years. At least the ones I've read and then seen the movie of, or seen the movie of and then read.
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extrinsic
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An illustrative exercise: read the print narrative of a motion picture, watch the motion picture, read along with the motion picture, comparatively contrast what's different. Interior discourse is the main difference, not usually carried over to the motion picture, aside from technological distinctions due to once upon a time shortfalls of motion picture capture now overcome by computer graphic imaging advancements -- when competent.

Ernest Hemingway's novella The Old Man and the Sea, print 1952; John Sturges director, motion picture 1958, is the ideal narrative for this exercise. According to Turner Classic Movies, "most literal, word-for-word rendition of a written story ever filmed." Still true today.

Not the most riveting narrative in either case, allows for stronger focus on comparative contrasts; short enough on both accounts to not be great burdens; major award winners in both cases; interior discourse nearly identical in both cases, except minus speech and thought attribution tags for the motion picture; some lost-in-translation effects due to overly faithful translation prompted by film technology shortfalls of the time and on its face the motion picture's different media, different narrative based on the original.

Most noteworthy distinction, the motion picture runs eighty-six minutes; the novella's twenty-seven thousand words read, at average English reader reading pace of one hundred forty words per minute, one hundred ninety minutes: obviously, the paces differ considerably and influence how each is received. Faster readers might achieve a parity of times elapsed. My case, one-to-one. I've done this with these narratives, read the novella now two dozen times, viewed the motion picture a dozen times.

"The Tin Star" by John W. Cunningham (first page UNZ.org embedded PDF) is the basis for Fred Zinnemann's motion picture High Noon, another noteworthy motion picture due to its real time elapsed depiction; eighty-five minutes length, in-scene time elapsed parallel. The motion picture translation deviates from the short story, though.

[ February 04, 2018, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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walexander
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This conversation brings up an interesting point I've been studying about dialog. That a common advice is to speak your words aloud to get a feeling of believability but most writers who do so don't realize they are shifting their style of writing toward a script rather than a novel. They unknowingly believe that the reader might understand an inflection or emotion added to the scene as they read aloud instead of focusing on their written word. Movies give you a lot of visual clues to what is written in the book.

A writer must stay with their words so as to inspire the movie to play within the reader's imagination.

I believe this simple concept is why the younger generation is having a lot of trouble absorbing written word because they are spoon fed visual medium now.

Rant starting: I really wish Rowling would have stayed with her novel writing. Think of how much better might have been fantastic beasts if she would have written it as a novel first or cursed child and how many kids would have swarmed the shelves to read a whole book. The movie and the play are but a shadow of what she could have done. Who puts out a script as a book? Or divides a children's play into two parts with tickets costing hundreds of dollars? It's hard to knock her for what she did with the Harry series but her latest stuff has been a disappointment. Rant ended.

The essay's I have been reading on perfecting dialog has been very enlightening. Especially on punctuation and dialog tags.

This ties into another thread with E's journeys to the stars. It has taken seven years for me to reach the point I could even begin to understand what these professionals are talking about in relation to the dialog. Now, I move farther and twenty times faster in my understanding than I did when I first set down to a keyboard.

And still, I have a lot to learn.

Cheers,

W.

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Jack Albany
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As an oral storyteller I have found it almost impossible to translate that style into written prose. But I am a hit with the local drama group.

My current struggle is to find a process that will allow me to tick all the necessary boxes for dramatic writing.

Jack.

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extrinsic
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Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker cycle is a written-word equivalent of oral tale spinning, the raconteur type.

Another illustrative exercise is to compare a script to its performances, stage and screen where available. Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" is a signal narrative for each of the three forms.

Back in the day, early novels were "novelizations" of stage plays, so that a revenue stream could be enhanced, to promote plays, and distribute a work as far as it would travel.

Problem was copyright pirates, then known as "literary agents," agents of shipping companies and who carried purloined works to domestic competition, sometimes next door to an "authorized" publisher, and far-flung pirates abroad, made off with properties as soon as they materialized, were performed, published, serialized, novelized, and tanked creator revenue after creators made a mere pittance. The one positive was those pirated versions were nonetheless attributed to their creators, who then could live well and comfortable as long as adorers continued to fete them.

The rise of the mass-production industrial press diluted the latter practice, as writers then were protected somewhat by copyright laws with ever stronger teeth and claws, and did not need to expend as much time on promotional tours to the provinces and urban and rural fetes put on to attract their celebrity attendance. Problem there, again, by and large, stronger copyright laws advanced due to industrialists lobbied for their own benefits and continued to shortchange writers. Circa late twentieth century, creator parity at last caught up, due to writer associations advocated for writers' rights.

U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and global conventions prompted by the 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization finalized creator, producer, distributor, seller, consumer parity. A few more changes and all will be ideal, like several adjustments of standard rights' contract clauses related to remainders, audits, contract expiration, and retainages.

Meantime, the written creative arts advanced to present day's far more strong, vivid, lively sensory experience reality imitation Realism emphases. More distance to go that direction, too.

Locating writers' works that manage Realism's ever escalated mischiefs in this pluralistic, anything goes age, includes every which-a-way crossovers of any form, category, mannerism, yada, is a serious challenge; that is, distinction from works that revert to early pre-Realism narrator-writer tells at the drop of a creator's imagination lapses.

Besides, many readers and writers are more versed in the Romanticism mannerisms of narrator-writer tell and are easily lost among the lively vividness of emergent twenty-first century post, post-Realism mannerisms.

Today's writers, though, would be well-served to appreciate the as yet underdefined conventions of the post, post-Realism, twenty-first century form, for at least lively reader appeal potentials, if not also as well the ready translation to motion picture forms, and especially to catch up the social-cultural pace of immediate, effortless entertainment content, that written word exceeds over motion picture competition -- private, personal, individual interior discourse anchored in an external Realism reality imitation motion portrait: third-person omniscient narrator's reflected access limited to one agonist's received perceptions, responses, and attitudes. But then again, anything somewhat dramatic goes for now.

[ February 06, 2018, 07:38 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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A couple of suggestions here:

Writers, instead of reading their dialogue out loud to their "readers" should have someone else do the reading. Writers who do this will learn more about how their words work for their readers, but they also risk having a rather painful experience because whoever does their reading for them will not know how the writers intended for the work to be read.

For those who are more comfortable telling a story out loud than they are putting their words down on paper (or screen) a recording of their oral version of the story can be transcribed and then edited as written work. Some of the flavor of the oral version may be retained, though, of course, much of it will also be lost (inflection, pronunciation, emphasis, etc). It's something worth experimenting on, at least.

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Jack Albany
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The real issue with oral storytelling is the immediate feedback from the audience. It's interactive storytelling rather than 'show or tell' storytelling. To recreate this in prose requires a deep appreciation of what the reader really wants.
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extrinsic
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In-person yarn spinning, my strongest experiences with that form reduced to writing are from folklore custom, tradition, and artifact collection and study. Folkloristics is the social science discipline's label, is part of ethnology. Anyway, online access to those narrative forms is not as free and easy as Card's narratives. Also, I worked many years as a live performance artist in historical period person, event, place, time, and situation and developed my own content through intensive research, and before live audience trial and error, vaudeville revue-like.

Here's a summary of one folklore collection, not the content, much of which is restricted due to in-progress process, copyright, and privacy concerns. "Karen Baldwin Folklore Archive," 1974-2015, Joyner Library, Special Collections, manuscript collection #1160.

I've read some several thousand of the collection's items for accession purposes; mine one is held in it. Oh my. What all I am oath bound to say utter nada about. Plus, from study of the folk oral raconteur form in all its warts and glories I am free to share if interested. Terms such as performance space, scenario, audience, participants, ostension, gossip, rumor, legend, myth, share, say, think, believe, know, make, do, authentication, identity, tradition, custom, ritual, for examples.

[ February 07, 2018, 05:26 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Jack Albany
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Let's not forget that oral storytelling is also immersive; simply because there is a shared mythos between yarn-spinner and audience. That IS translatable into prose with proper introduction, but knowing what the reader really wants to know, or needs to know, and when, is problematic.
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