drwhat posted:
editing without taking the time to really get at the writer & into his or her head through talking about it all and beating it all out of them verbally & conceptually seems really bullshitty to lil ol uneducated me

your talkin bout creative rewriting there i think. otherwise agreed, thankfully no ones doin that hear

drwhat posted:
Fucker posted:
lol if you dont dictate all your post. your with the 99% i take it?


ah this explains your posts, nice to see someone hiring less educated, born & bred americans. semper fi

i hired the worlds first mirror thta can type actually. see ya

deadken posted:
dialogue is just two worthless bags o' protein flappin their lipid folds at each other. if i need my characters to communicate meaningfully i make them have sex with each other

just give up now would you

"lipid folds"

"worthless bags o' protein"

Sure nuff

babyfinland posted:
Impper experiences editorial criticism for the first time. And it is Not Prety

what the hell are you talking about. how about this: shut up

Fucker posted:
o rite i did'nt even touch impers thing lets touching impers thing

-a girl character calls the protagonist 'cool', yikes. and 'i like you guys....' doubleyikes
-the protagonist has apparently done a heroic deed helping the girl when she was spazzing out but hes thoughts are all on himself, his situation and how she must think of him. so is the dude a selfish nihilist or a valiant hero? he asks her what she thinks of them. and shes more than eager to describe her feelings towards the dudes. in real life people want nothing more than to talk about themselves but here the girl immediately starts a conversation about the protagonists and is genuinely interested in their gay ramblings i guess? and dosent try her hardest to steer the conversation to herself like a human being would.
-milos is cooler then the narrator and deserves way more backstory, a whole chapter for himself. i get the sense that milos is a capable cool dude with a sweet ride and a dope sense of humor and the narrator is a gay self-indulgent child and that in turn makes me question hes motives every time he asks the girl if shes alright. theres a kind of chasm between his inner monologue and the stuff he says and does.



Milos’ VW Golf is a sight to behold. It looks relatively innocuous from the outside, but the inside is a black-lit neon nightmare that resembles a spaceship’s console—there are hundreds of buttons, knobs, and dials, each controlling some aspect of the vehicle’s handling or performance. After starting the ignition, Milos will always perform a series of diagnostic checks and make a series of micro-adjustments; I have never once noticed a difference in the ride, but he claims it makes all the difference. One of Milos’ pastimes is driving on the interstates and challenging anybody he sees in an American-made car to a race .


id want a closer connection between the first two sentences. "Milos' VW Golf is a sight to behold. Not from the outside, mind, it looks innocuous enough to the pedestrian walking by, but the inside...."

ive never even heard much less seen a car with hundreds of buttons knobs and dials and i doubt many have either so id emphasize the fact, "there are, i kid you not, hundreds of buttons, knobs, and dials" also the thing seems unique and interesting enough to write more about. a couple sentences describing the layout and the shapes of the rows of buttons and knobs.

since its established that the protagonist doesnt know much bout the car, how would he know that all of the things control handling or performance, hence "...each controlling some aspect of the vehicle's handling or performance according to Milos.

theres twice the word series in the same sentence so the latter should acknowledge the former, "...Milos will always perform a series of diagnostic checks, then a series of micro-adjustments; I have never once noticed a difference in the ride, but he claims it makes "all the difference.""

you cant do anything other then ride on the interstates so id change "...is driving on the interstates.." to "...is roaming the interstates.."



. . I don’t know the rules to the races, but Milos does have hundreds of videos of his races. He films the videos himself and enjoys showing them off. In the videos, he pulls alongside some guys in a car, at which point he must be gesturing to them because they look into the camera and begin to make belligerent gestures of their own; Milos then adjusts the camera’s focus to get a clear picture of his opponent’s face . . . this image will persist for some time until the refined mechanical hum of Milos’ Golf can be heard alongside the throaty roar of the opponent’s American car: inevitably an angry, crestfallen, confused, or shocked expression will appear on the opponent’s face as it’s pulled out of the frame; at this very point Milos will simultaneously begin cackling both in the video and in real life, simultaneously point at the loser’s face in the video and in real life, simultaneously shout something along the lines of: “Shitty ass American cars! Hahaha! Glory! Glory to Serbia!” in the video and in real life.


first sentence should be two separate ones. Or maybe just remove the remark about the rules. "Milos has hundreds of videos of his races and they're all shot by himself."

if all the videos have the same format, then that fact should be emphasized "Every video has the same plot."

"he pulls alongside some guys in a car" doesnt sound natural imo. how bout "Milos pulls alongside a car, apparently gesturing wildly at the crew inside, because at this point they always look into the camera and begin to make belligerent gestures of their own; Milos then adjusts the camera's focus to get a clear picture of his opponent's face . . ."

the real life part is confusing without makin more explicit the fact that real life means the situation where he's showing the video to somebody. mayhap "...a t this very point both the Milos in the video and the Milos showcasing said video will begin cackling, simultaneously pointing at the loser's facem simultaneously shouting something along the lines..."

etc etc etc etc

i actually agree with most of what you say here. my plan in the book is for milos to take over the narrative and push the whiny narrator out of the thing almost entirely

deadken posted:
yeah i did a bad grammar sometimes + i need to word massage smooth fold + its true that the other characters dont really talk about anything other than the protagonist, but lmao one of ur criticisms is 'your protagonist called an old woman's blouse ugly, he's an asshole, therefore strory bad' lol

first of all you gotta stop thinking that ppl are gonna critisize ur work simply outa spite and theyll make up flaws just to rile u up.

ugly is a reaaaally strong word in written word. imagine a piece in even a real edgy alt magazine using the word ugly to describe the clothing or face of an interviewee. that shit dont fly. u prolly eat goatse for breakfast and ur aim handle is hitlerlover but when its a real piece of prose, you cant have a dude were supposed to care about use a word like that in his inner monologue. not within the first couple of paragraphs.


see, first impressions matter soooo much. when ppl pick up a book, their attention is at a hunned percent and they pay loadsa attention to every word. but gradually as they keep reading, their gonna get weary real fast. reading taxes the brain a bunch and as a result, check this: things that happen at the beginnings of chapters are what a reader is gonna feel more, think more about and take the most out of.

when you introduce your protagonist or any character really, the first lines describing them either through dialogue or a catalog of their garb, decide how people are gonna think of em.

and yes, if you inadvertantly present your protagonist as an unlikeable piece of shit through a poor choice of words, it can put off the reader for the rest of the story. you can cry about the fact but you cant change it. equally bad is not introducing the character strongly enough. if even at the fiftieth page i have to put my mind into figuring out what the protagonists motivations are, somethings wrong. you gotta choose how you wanna portray your dude and then do it efficiently, fast and very very clearly. it doesnt even take that many lines if your good at it.

so how bout instead of having the character call an elderly womans blouse ugly, make it 'fantastically coloured', 'unusual', 'somethin only a blackberry user would wear bwahaha. rip steve jobs rip', 'somewhat rare', 'spicy' or well, anything but just 'ugly'. even 'really ugly' would be better, then it would drive home better the fact that the dude is an asshole.

why is the one thing the character notices in the morning bus somebodys blouse in the first place. how bout the old lady's wrinkles, shaking hands, eyes, sitting position, voice, attitude, height, movements, accent or word choises. commenting on somebodys clothing as the first thing you do in the morning is such a faggot hting to do. unless thats your point and you really want me to dislike the dude. but in that case youve again failed cause youd have to have at least some exposition to his inner thinking anyway, like 'these elderly poors with their ugly shit. get a job morons. im cool. i wish everybody was as cool as me.'

Impper posted:
i actually agree with most of what you say here. my plan in the book is for milos to take over the narrative and push the whiny narrator out of the thing almost entirely

i honestly cant tell if your kidding or not and thats incidentally the one big thing that imo u gotta spend time on with the text, making things more explicit. although much of that is the fact that the scene is from somewhere in the middle of the whole story so we dont know your characters well. still, your introducing way too much stuff way too fast, the cool car, the entire philosophy of the two guys, the videos, flashbacking to a previous scene, all three characters learning about each other. a scene with dialogue between more then two characters is real heavy to follow, so you gotta give it some air. add more stuff to it, make it longer. whats real good about the scene is that unlike any other character in any of the stories so far, im genuinely interested in milos. hes a great character but i think you might be turning him into too much of a comic relief. this vid shows what you can do with a character like him and how many dimensions you can put into what someone could easily dismiss as a weird smelly borat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOyU_OzRXnM&ob=av3e


if the car is a big part of milos, then when were learning about the car were really learning about the character. so maybe id cut the scene in half, in the first half id talk about milos to a greatest extent and in the second you could have some small talk between all three and then move the philosophy stuff to another scene alltogether.

like, theres even the fact that your dude is having a huge monologue with hella words and the girl at the back is supposed to listen to all of it without even once going 'whatcha say? what was that?' while their riding something you earlier described as a super pwoerful vehicle with a loud as shit engine. i mean if its pimped out, it prolly dosent have as much insulation between the engine and the wheel as a regular car would. people might not catch stuff like that consciously but unconsciously theyll feel weird about the scene cause their brain knows it couldnt happen irl

Fucker posted:
first of all you gotta stop thinking that ppl are gonna critisize ur work simply outa spite and theyll make up flaws just to rile u up.

yeah i just saw argue words and argue mode engage. ur completely right that i bad grammar a lot, also that my characters spend most of their time talking to/about the protagonist, also that i tend to shovel a big ole spoonful of exposition right into the readers lipid mouth flaps of lipid. i will defend my use of the ugly word to the death, however,

deadken posted:
i will defend my use of the ugly word to the death, however,

go right ahead mang, thats what were itt for

Fucker posted:

Impper posted:
i actually agree with most of what you say here. my plan in the book is for milos to take over the narrative and push the whiny narrator out of the thing almost entirely

i honestly cant tell if your kidding or not and thats incidentally the one big thing that imo u gotta spend time on with the text, making things more explicit. although much of that is the fact that the scene is from somewhere in the middle of the whole story so we dont know your characters well. still, your introducing way too much stuff way too fast, the cool car, the entire philosophy of the two guys, the videos, flashbacking to a previous scene, all three characters learning about each other. a scene with dialogue between more then two characters is real heavy to follow, so you gotta give it some air. add more stuff to it, make it longer. whats real good about the scene is that unlike any other character in any of the stories so far, im genuinely interested in milos. hes a great character but i think you might be turning him into too much of a comic relief. this vid shows what you can do with a character like him and how many dimensions you can put into what someone could easily dismiss as a weird smelly borat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOyU_OzRXnM&ob=av3e


if the car is a big part of milos, then when were learning about the car were really learning about the character. so maybe id cut the scene in half, in the first half id talk about milos to a greatest extent and in the second you could have some small talk between all three and then move the philosophy stuff to another scene alltogether.

like, theres even the fact that your dude is having a huge monologue with hella words and the girl at the back is supposed to listen to all of it without even once going 'whatcha say? what was that?' while their riding something you earlier described as a super pwoerful vehicle with a loud as shit engine. i mean if its pimped out, it prolly dosent have as much insulation between the engine and the wheel as a regular car would. people might not catch stuff like that consciously but unconsciously theyll feel weird about the scene cause their brain knows it couldnt happen irl

i was writing some things about convergent and divergent infinite series being the "root" (math joke) of the epistemological break between impper and Fucker (i located it in the part where impper thought Fucker's encouragement was condescending), as well as what that means in narrative structure and art ethics, but i'll abandon it and perhaps save it for after my calculus midterm.

i agree with alot of these criticisms here, but i think the artistic intent is.. in danger of being too compromised for the sake of 'verisimilitude'. in imppers excerpt, and from what i can see of the story, there is comedy/tragedy dialectic that is fantastical (in my opinion this is more effective than 'realistic narratives'). you know, 'ecstatic truth', so here there is room to suspend physics and time... he can go on an asymptotic monologue, we do not need to disrupt here the quick descent towards negative infinity. i think it would be wise, though, to break the narrator's narcissistic deadlock and have Emily miss almost the entire story about the Soviet officer. thats wikid. thats just a thought though, there's other ways to do it, perhaps being distracted by the erratic driving, the restlessness Fucker suggests (without the interjections though), or just simple boredom. either way, the option i'm advocating is having the story itself turn on the narrator. my practical thought is the opposite of FUCKER's, you are giving too much space here to the narrator, too much empathy. to make my point very strongly: it's similar to Everything is Illuminated. i imagine you yourself identify too much with the narrator (or perhaps i do)

it is all very chock full though, the car probably deserves its own chapter or at least a fleshing out, the hundreds of buttons is a little too ambiguous when you leave at just that. you can go so far with that car, with those strange buttons, it's worth it to treat milo's perverse enjoyment with love. Christlove

Edited by Crow (Oct. 18, 2011 05:38:14)