General Discussion Thread

[naut]

Although I've only participated once, I've been reading the advice and pointers in each lesson, and they are really helpful. Thanks Tamur for doing this.

[PowerWizard]

Though I'm not a native English speaker, I'd like to sign up and join the writing society.

[Tamur]

Thanks for the feedback Rhythmic. I'm glad you're enjoying the material. At the least it's a good reminder of the many different ways to attack a story.

And PowerWizard, welcome! You've come at a good point. We're moving on into discussing point of view, so it's a fairly clean break from what's come before. Feel free to join in.

[Prince Cobra]

Another scene which is out of place in my story. I have my own methods to retell it in the story but not in so dramatic light. It's obvious I am obsessed by the Doukas family. I tried to think something different but my mind refused to work. Finally, i gave up and decided to write it since this scene is not to reveal something of great importance for the outcome of the main story. But one day I'll have to restrict myself, otherwise something important may slip before its time. I does not want to make my story complete failure!
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Fullstop
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In fact I am ready with some non-expert (!!!!!!!!!!) comments about the other two posts in the 9th excercise. When am I allowed to comment ( before or after the 'official' comment) ???

[Tamur]

When am I allowed to comment ( before or after the 'official' comment) ???

Anytime at all. The moment a participant posts in the exercises thread, it's fair game for comments by anyone, just make sure your comments are in this thread rather than in the exercise posting thread. I lock the writing exercise thread so that stays free of extra material.

This thread is a meant as a central discussion area for any comments on anyone's writing (or any writing topic related to the course).

So yes, feel free to comment on others' writing! I'd love it if you all would point out things you notice in the others' writing more often, but that's entirely up to you whether you want to do it or not. I'll make a note on this in the course description.

[Prince Cobra]

Attention: the author of the following lines is not an expert at all!

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Timsup2nothin
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I liked "Dead or Dying" . It's hard for me to go out of history background and I appreciate writings who write about simple things. The atmosphere and the characters was excellent work of yours and so was the final. Here I will stop since you can continue with praises like this. Personally, it grabbed me.

"The Seed" was slightly different. Unlike the previous text, I needed more time to comprehend it. Maybe because I do not read much science fiction in English. Note, some of my notes can be a product of this weakness of mine. Yet, even after that reading it carefully it could not move me in the way the first did it. I caught your idea of the disappearing human race, the criticism on how far people can go and then the struggle for survival between the two worlds. I think your idea was to make the reader sympathise the grains. And you did it. And when you have won the reader for your cause I think you wanted to switch back and to make him feel some pity for the human beings, either. I think you also did well here. But somehow these charcters stood too far from the reader. I am really interested if you had planned how to attract the reader in the story.

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MountainTroll

Welcome in the Mead hall!
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Part 1
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It's slightly difficult to comment it. I liked the NATO meaning but I could not catch the rest. Is it a kind of irony? I suspect that but it had something in common with the market situation and in France I am not familiar with. Or maybe the widespread lack of good manners?

I also caught some French-German confrontation but since I favour the Germans (esp. in WW1; historical reasons: Bulgaria was an ally of Germany) you can not rely on my approval :p .

Or maybe, which is also possible, I am going too deep and my ideas have nothing in common with your idea. I'll be glad if you tell me which of my statements are closer to the truth

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Part 2
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Good. It is still slightly like a scheme. However, I still have that feeling for my own writing and I 've been making desperate attempts to make a decent story for almost two years. It also had only one conflict but I doubt the task wanted more than it. I liked it.



It is a good example what life is most of the time.

1) Money is power.

2) Amongst the idealist there are always people who are practical. The Crusades is what comes in my sick from history mind.


3) Is this me or someone else?

[Tamur]

Just to let everyone know, I'll be putting up comments today on lesson 9. My editor friend has had trouble getting to the past week's comments so it'll just be me this time around. After comments are up I'll put up the next lesson, and will extend the deadline till Wednesday next week.

[Tamur]

Reverse that. My editor friend was able to make comments, but I'm still under the gun at work and in the evenings from other RL activities. Time management is definitely not my strong suit at the moment. gah. So, nearly all comments are from her this week.

[Prince Cobra]

I like the plot twist of the father's spy durning to counterspy. It also makes me wonder what Nicephorus has planned to gain power.

Do you tempt me to start a whole new story?

The chess was a metaphor for what will happen one day(though the story itself is not that simple).

shared for the new Kanrei not sure what this means

This means I was too hungry when I wrote these lines. I meant ' shared his opinion for the new Kanrei ' but I missed few words.

As far as I could grasp it, the main weakness of the second text was that I put too much history there without making it an integral part of the text, right? And more interaction between the characters. Am I right? I'll see what I can do next time.

And I'll try to improve certain style weaknesses.
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Tamur, thank you for these comments ( also thanks to your mysterious editor). I've just been angered by a stupid mistake of mine that led to the deletion of the second half of the new up-date of my story. These comments slightly distracted me and make me feel better, though they reminded some weaknesses of my writing.

[PowerWizard]

PM-d Tamur and he said that I should introduce myself here as a new member of MHWS. First of all, greetings to all members. This seems to be a very nice and helpful community, and I'm happy to join in.

Although I'm a "freshman" here, I've been posting since a few months on TWC with the same nick. Tried my very first AAR which was delayed due to my exams. Now that I'm free, I can devote more time to my hobbies, especially writing.

The reasons why I'd like to join are quite obvious: sharpening my quill and eventually improving my English .

This online course is a great idea, and many thanks to Tamur for his excellent lessons. I wish I had this kind of content and approach in school.

I haven't decided, what I will be writing about in the exercises, as I don't have any fixations. I guess the exercises will give me good ideas.

[Prince Cobra]

PM-d Tamur and he said that I should introduce myself here as a new member of MHWS. First of all, greetings to all members. This seems to be a very nice and helpful community, and I'm happy to join in.

Although I'm a "freshman" here, I've been posting since a few months on TWC with the same nick. Tried my very first AAR which was delayed due to my exams. Now that I'm free, I can devote more time to my hobbies, especially writing.

The reasons why I'd like to join are quite obvious: sharpening my quill and eventually improving my English .

This online course is a great idea, and many thanks to Tamur for his excellent lessons. I wish I had this kind of content and approach in school.

I haven't decided, what I will be writing about in the exercises, as I don't have any fixations. I guess the exercises will give me good ideas.

Ha, fresh blood. I'm quite inquisitive what your style as a writer will be. Obviously, the people participating here have too different styles and this will only benefit the whole project.

[MountainTroll]

Welcome PowerWizard,
I too am a newer Mead Hall member. It is ok to be clueless when starting out here. :) One aspect I've enjoyed about Tamur's lessons is that each one can generate a different story idea. - Or a new character. I was looking through the past assignments and realized that I have several ideas now I could develop out into larger projects down the road.

On a different note, what is an AAR? I went to the link and guess it has something to do with historical scenarios? After Googling AAR, I came up with things like the Assosciation of American Railroads, and the All-American Rejects.
I bet it is something else though... right?

[Timsup2nothin]

Welcome PowerWizard!

I second (or third) that there does not have to be a set style from lesson to lesson. Take the assignment in whatever direction works for you.

MT...around here AAR stands for 'After Action Report', and it is a form that shows up on other game centric forums also. There aren't any hard fast rules, but usually they are serials at least loosely based on a game...obviously here that would likely be a Total War series game. This is a thread in the Throne Room section that lists the AARs on The Org.

[MountainTroll]

Hello Stephen Asen,
You wrote:

Part 1

It's slightly difficult to comment it. I liked the NATO meaning but I could not catch the rest. Is it a kind of irony? I suspect that but it had something in common with the market situation and in France I am not familiar with. Or maybe the widespread lack of good manners?

For those of you who joined later, and didn't do this assignment, the challenge was to build characters (and define their cultures) out of Tamur's minimal requirements 1. A mountain Valley, 2. A World War

It seems that Timsup2Nothin also saw this as an opportunity to break froma traditional setting and try something new (with his sci-fi bacteria battles!).

I was just trying something different as well. I wanted to try fantasy characters that children would relate to, (dwarves, etc) while weaving in the basic motivations behind WWII and the general propaganda game. Kind of like Animal Farm, I guess. - But with a bit more humour. I also wanted to show that casualties in war are not just people or land, but also cultural traditions.

I really like how in this course, I've been able to bounce around and try different genres. (Young Adult Lit, fantasy, drama, historical fiction, etc.)

[MountainTroll]

Ok... here is my non-expert All around assessment of Assignment 9:

Hey Tamur, by the way, I think you should give an extra Cheers with a Mead Cup emote to the stellar submission each week. I would vote for Timsup2nothin's sci-fi work. That was a pretty slick way to interpret the assignment, and assign bacteria as characters.

Stepen Asen - I enjoyed reading your Doukas selection. The characters were all very well described (down to their hair and skin tones). I could picture their movements about the room, and would've kept reading to find out more.
The second selection in Japan was not as clear in my mind with concrete details, but I liked the philosophical ideas you presented towards the end. It gave substance to the story.
The Doukas story compared to the Japan story seemed more like a shallow spy thriller. (Although, for fun summer reading, that is the story I would prefer to read, sitting in the sun with a lemonade in hand.)

So they each had different strengths.


The only other one to comment on was Timsup2Nothin's piece with 3 characters. Over the past assignments, he has shown he has an talent for interspersing dialogue with characters to show their relationships to each other. Do you spend a lot of time eavesdropping on people at parks or restaurants to get your dialogue timing so perfect?

[Timsup2nothin]

The only other one to comment on was Timsup2Nothin's piece with 3 characters. Over the past assignments, he has shown he has an talent for interspersing dialogue with characters to show their relationships to each other. Do you spend a lot of time eavesdropping on people at parks or restaurants to get your dialogue timing so perfect?

No, I just talk a lot!

[Prince Cobra]

Thanks Mountain Troll.

[Tamur]

Just have to say, thanks MountainTroll! haha, totally unexpected interpretation of the scene, which is why these assignments are such fun.

A reminder that the deadline for lesson 11 writing is tonight before you sleep.

[Prince Cobra]

Just have to say, thanks MountainTroll! haha, totally unexpected interpretation of the scene, which is why these assignments are such fun.

A reminder that the deadline for lesson 11 writing is tonight before you sleep.

:gathering the remnants of my inspiration and charging:

[Prince Cobra]

Mountain Troll

It was very entertaining to read the three points of view. I most liked the third one . It's normal to think that he will disapprove because of his moral... Well, he had his own moral.

The second was also interesting. She was the ' good guy ' in this story.

The third... I need some time to reflect on her story. She is quite intriguing character...On the one hand, I want to know more about her but on the other, I am not very sure if the story will flow well with many details.

Generally, I liked this story very much.

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I've just realised I've misunderstood the task. First person means "I" and this is obvious now. My point of view are written in third person but since these are retelling their thoughts word by word, I hope this will not be a problem

Just for the archive: the story happens at the time of story from Excercise#9 (1295 year)

[Ironsword]

Back from Ibiza.

I will be posting again this week, and it looks like i've a lot of stuff to catch up on, and some stories to read!

[Tamur]

Hopefully you got sunburnt at least once just to make us feel better about our complete lack of vacations! Nice weather down there?

And yes, there's a lot to read and catch up on. Glad to see you back!

[Dafuge]

Hi all,

Well I basically would like to join up if I can. I'm 15, a year before doing my GCSE's (no idea what they are called in America, they are massive test you get when you are 16) so I probably won't be as experienced as all of you lot, but I can try, eh?

[Tamur]

hi Knights of Palma! You are most welcome to join up. We happen to be one of the few organisations on the planet not to require any GCSEs whatsoever

You've come at a good breaking point, where we are moving into techniques of writing rather than all the background work one does before setting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). You may wish give a read to the previous lessons, but it's not required. Feel free to dive in at lesson 13. We've still 12 weeks of work to do, so there is plenty to keep you busy.

[Tamur]

I just ran into this on my daily trawl of the internet as I wait for the computer to do its thing at work...

Kurt Vonnegut on style

Since we're spending three weeks on voice, I thought this might be interesting to someone out there. Some wise words there.

[Prince Cobra]

Is there any change in the deadline? I see still no posts for 13 Exercise.

P.S. In one hour I should be ready with all of the tasks. :sweat:

[Tamur]

We'll go with this week's assignments.

However, I am now officially over two weeks late with comments, so instead of piling yet more on and not getting it done, I'm going to call it August recess this week. I'm still keenly interested in the course and the writing assignments, but I'm being blasted at work the past three weeks, and find that what free time I have at home is being used for various RL activities.

So, no lesson or assignment this week. We'll pick back up next week. I have a drop-dead deadline tomorrow afternoon at work that will hopefully put a miserable project out of its misery. With that done, I will work to catch up on commenting, and a slight reorganisation of the course.

[Prince Cobra]

Take your time, Tamur! I hope everything with you go smoothly.

Personally, I do not mind. It is August after all and many people here seem to be on holiday. I doubt postponing the deadline and the next lesson will harm the project.

P.S. Tamur, I hope you did not mean red traffic light in the sentence of the task.

P.S.2. Am i supposed the underline the corrections I've made on my texts?

[Ironsword]

Tamur, take your time mate!

You don't need us to edit/proof any of your work, do you?

[Tamur]

hi all,

With a great deal of hesitancy, I write to let everyone know that I will have to call off the course. A couple of very large real-life projects have sprung up and are clamouring for my attention. These projects were completely non-existent at the time we began 14 weeks ago.

I would offer to at least write up and post the lesson materials for the remaining 12 weeks, but even that would be subject to major postponements as it stands. However, I will be writing all the remaining materials so that, whenever my schedule eases up, we can resume the course (or restart if too much time has elapsed) with everything ready to go except for feedback on exercises.

I deeply apologise for saying we would plough onwards regardless of what happened. This is a classic case of eating my words. It would be a deep disservice to those who have contributed so wonderfully to the course to continue to say "I'll get to it soon" on reviews and posting lesson materials.

Thank you to everyone who contributed. I've learnt a deep respect for the quality of writers who live here at the Org.