Random Random Chat Thread XL

[Jab]

Oops, that and BPL/Champions League.

This Sunday is Jones vs Gustafsson

 

[Andronicus]

GTA, NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB playoffs.

Some great suggestions there, but having left my Xbox in WA, and not having foxtel, I see the end result as me still being at the pub.

No UFC?

Forgot about Sundays fight..........will be there for sure.

 

[Tassieboy]

Anyone have a dart on the Brownlow?

 

[Andronicus]

If anyone is keen (as long as numbers don't get too out of hand) we are having a bit of a brownlow sweepstakes thing tonight.

Short notice, but if you want to come and talk footy with a fairly relaxed crew send me a pm.

 

[Doss]

Howard Moon

Good to see you've returned, mate. Where have you been hiding?

Written that travel book yet?

 

[GUMBLETRON]

So we have the usual footy tipping comp at work, and this year I finally won it.

I've been chasing the trophy since I started here four years ago, but I thought it needed a little something extra. Fortunately one of the skills that makes my better half better is knowing her way around a needle and thread.

 

[Burzum]

You should poke a hole in the inflatable Hawthorn finger.

 

[Beerfish]

I've been chasing the trophy since I started here four years ago, but I thought it needed a little something extra. Fortunately one of the skills that makes my better half better is knowing her way around a needle and thread.

But seriously, that's the best office trophy I've ever seen.. needlework not withstanding. They must take it seriously. All I got was money.

 

[Howard Moon]

Howard Moon

Good to see you've returned, mate. Where have you been hiding?

Written that travel book yet?

Cheers mate,

Work cut my forum access, tough times!

I had to retreat (retweet?) To Twitter to put out spotfires by followers wanting to test their anti Essendon bile on me...full time job for a while there....

Just getting my head around tapatalk now.

I have huge motivational peaks and troughs with the book...in a mega trough right now...been edited so much it's not the thing I got intended anymore...

Hope I get another burst soon tho!

 

[Doss]

Cheers mate,

Work cut my forum access, tough times!

I had to retreat (retweet?) To Twitter to put out spotfires by followers wanting to test their anti Essendon bile on me...full time job for a while there....

Just getting my head around tapatalk now.

I have huge motivational peaks and troughs with the book...in a mega trough right now...been edited so much it's not the thing I got intended anymore...

Hope I get another burst soon tho!

Ah yes, the day work cut my access to BigFooty I will be shattered. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen.

When you say edited, do you mean by yourself or by someone else?

 

[Howard Moon]

Ah yes, the day work cut my access to BigFooty I will be shattered. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen.

When you say edited, do you mean by yourself or by someone else?

Some women edited it, I had my reservations because I knew she would be too technical. She took all my personality out of it, changed paragraphs here and there, butchered the start. But there were good additions too.

So I got it back and set about adding my flair back to it but it seems more hotch potch now and I can't get it flowing how it was.

It felt like I was at a pub telling you tales over a beer. I'm.no writer so the flaws were endearing. Now it sounds like some guy narrating the tales of somebody else in.overblown detail...I'll find an example...and post a paragraph.

This was in India, she said I had to describe like I'm talking to a blind person.....
The next time I awoke the bus had stopped, it was dawn and we were in the most astonishing of places. I was the solitary person awake peering out at a picture perfect vista. We were in the middle of two of the tallest mountains I could ever imagine; betwixt two sheer rock walls split by a gaping valley that plunged seemingly forever down to a river below. There was roughly a forty meter gap between the two rocky walls and stretching across this expanse was an old style suspension bridge subtly swaying in a breeze that was funnelling through the mountainous crevice. The rising sun was poking itself past the mountains edge illuminating one side of the rock wall in brilliant colour and leaving our side still shrouded in the shadows.

The only sounds to be heard were that of the Buddhist prayer flags flapping as they criss-crossed their way over the gap like a technicolour spider’s web. My moment of sleepy awe was interrupted by the sound of bells and male singing. I turned to see a cave carved out of the rock face with what seemed to be a holy man blessing our driver. As the driver bent down on one knee rhythmically reciting something the holy man made some gesticulations around his forehead then he came to our bus and blessed it.

My brow furrowed, how bad is this bridge? Do we actually need divine intervention to make it across? I looked at the bridge again; to call it rickety would be a gross understatement. It would be a close cousin to the bridge in the final moments of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I always find it amusing that buses and drivers get blessed for safe passage through the Himalayan mountains. There isn’t a second thought about infrastructure or building safer roads, they just pile all their eggs in the basket of a higher presence......

Just sounds overblown and not right,

What you reckon?

P.s sorry for the long post for those that are not interested.

 

[George Washington]

3rd paragraph is funny, like it.

First two are a bit of a wank.

 

[Howard Moon]

3rd paragraph is funny, like it.

First two are a bit of a wank.

Zackly! 3rd is me , start is her expanding.

 

[George Washington]

The only sounds to be heard were that of the Buddhist prayer flags flapping as they criss-crossed their way over the gap like a technicolour spider’s web. My moment of sleepy awe

I mean...

Sounds like she has misinterpreted your audience. Blokes looking for funny travel stories don't really want to wade through descriptions of the stunning vistas and cultural milieus. In my completely uninformed opinion..

 

[Howard Moon]

I mean...

Sounds like she has misinterpreted your audience. Blokes looking for funny travel stories don't really want to wade through descriptions of the stunning vistas and cultural milieus. In my completely uninformed opinion..

Nah agreed! This is the opinion I need, not a literary one.

She even suggested I remove a story where they made a porno in the hotel room next to us, or one where I abused an Indian rickshaw driver cause it was... culturally sensitive. Bah, it's all the good stuff!

I'm rewinding. Done.

 

[Pweter]

Nah agreed! This is the opinion I need, not a literary one.

She even suggested I remove a story where they made a porno in the hotel room next to us, or one where I abused an Indian rickshaw driver cause it was... culturally sensitive. Bah, it's all the good stuff!

I'm rewinding. Done.

I've only just wandered into this thread so am starting a fair way behind having decided to start on this page BUT.....

Does the editor /proof reader understand your target audience? By the sounds of it you want to sell this almost as your traveling memoirs and you are targeting a young to middle age predominately male audience. Therefore it needs more of a casual flavour to it. Yes, descriptive writing is great but it can become a bore if a whole book is dedicated to it, especially for those that prefer to get to the point rather than spend 200 words describing what can be done in 50.

 

[Howard Moon]

I've only just wandered into this thread so am starting a fair way behind having decided to start on this page BUT.....

Does the editor /proof reader understand your target audience? By the sounds of it you want to sell this almost as your traveling memoirs and you are targeting a young to middle age predominately male audience. Therefore it needs more of a casual flavour to it. Yes, descriptive writing is great but it can become a bore if a whole book is dedicated to it, especially for those that prefer to get to the point rather than spend 200 words describing what can be done in 50.

Hey mate, this just spilled from the travel travel page...

I'm just a novice who jotted down a whole load of tales, a few people told me it was good enough to take further so I passed it to this lady who edits. it's clear now that she wasn't suited, she's actually a sci fi writer figures why she wants descriptive work. But she was free and pretty much showed me it's a big difference between having stories and having a readable book. Plus I think my tales were too low brow for her so she mentally left early ;-)

I was always hesitant and wanted a traveller to look at it, I know now it's a must.

I'm just going to go back to the pre edit and do it my way, if only my family and friends get to see it so be it. It was written for them in the first place.

Are you in the business or just an avid reader?

 

[Pweter]

Hey mate, this just spilled from the travel travel page...

I'm just a novice who jotted down a whole load of tales, a few people told me it was good enough to take further so I passed it to this lady who edits. it's clear now that she wasn't suited, she's actually a sci fi writer figures why she wants descriptive work. But she was free and pretty much showed me it's a big difference between having stories and having a readable book. Plus I think my tales were too low brow for her so she mentally left early ;-)

I was always hesitant and wanted a traveller to look at it, I know now it's a must.

I'm just going to go back to the pre edit and do it my way, if only my family and friends get to see it so be it. It was written for them in the first place.

Are you in the business or just an avid reader?

Neither in business nor an avid reader as such... I enjoy reading but I don't get too much time these days with a young family taking most of my time when not working (on the job or at home).

When I was reading your edited/non edited paragraphs, and your thoughts on the editing of it, it reminded me of a book I have read called Somme Mud by Edward Francis Lynch. It is the war memoirs of an Australian WWI veteran that was essentially written for himself as a personal cleansing but also for his family. Many many years later it is released with only basic editing (filling in some blanks, adding structure and grammar mainly), leaving in much of what is not politically correct now but was fine at the time of writing (note it is not a crude book by any stretch). I thought it was brilliant, and for me it was the very personal way in which it was written that made it.

 

[Howard Moon]

Neither in business nor an avid reader as such... I enjoy reading but I don't get too much time these days with a young family taking most of my time when not working (on the job or at home).

When I was reading your edited/non edited paragraphs, and your thoughts on the editing of it, it reminded me of a book I have read called Somme Mud by Edward Francis Lynch. It is the war memoirs of an Australian WWI veteran that was essentially written for himself as a personal cleansing but also for his family. Many many years later it is released with only basic editing (filling in some blanks, adding structure and grammar mainly), leaving in much of what is not politically correct now but was fine at the time of writing (note it is not a crude book by any stretch). I thought it was brilliant, and for me it was the very personal way in which it was written that made it.

I know what you mean, everything can.get so formulaic and predictable to the point that if you read something that hasn't been `fixed` by an editor it can come across really raw and engaging. It's a charm I think I had and my voice sounded genuine....pre edit.

I Iike the sound of that book, might track it down.

 

[Pweter]

I know what you mean, everything can.get so formulaic and predictable to the point that if you read something that hasn't been `fixed` by an editor it can come across really raw and engaging. It's a charm I think I had and my voice sounded genuine....pre edit.

I Iike the sound of that book, might track it down.

This is the back end of a review I just looked up on it from The Australian, it captures the essence of the book and how it was written very well. Note when they say "descriptive", it is never a boring narrative. If you're a bit of a war buff like myself I think it is essential reading. It can get pretty graphic though, my old man couldn't finish the book but he is a big softy hidden inside a grizzly bear exterior.

......but Lynch distinguished his work by writing entirely in the present tense. Short words and crisp sentences keep the action tumbling in chilling, authentic detail across every page. The book's photographs are bleak, though Lynch also had a brilliantly descriptive pen and anyone who wants to know what it must have been like to be a soldier in the trenches need look no further.
Wounded five times, Lynch came home to write his story in exercise books. The manuscript remained with his family until now, when it emerges like a time capsule, curious in yesteryear phrases and oddly forgotten language, sometimes surprising in humour, offering a rare personal insight into friendship among the ordeals of war. It is a remarkably valuable addition to Australia's military history.
Among 252 men in Lynch's original detachment, only 19 were left with his battalion at war's end, all of them wounded more than once, yet none appears to have held a lasting hatred toward the enemy and most insist they enlisted only because their mates did. Lynch agrees. Afterwards he wrote: "The brightest memory of the lot is that I have known real men. Men with the cover off ... Men who were mates and mates who were men."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arc...infantryman-in-f/story-e6frg8no-1111112153898

 

[Howard Moon]

Cheers for that.

Could even have been written from.his diary I guess, hence the present tense and short sharp writing.

The lady said my big problem was switching from past to present tense too much but for me the only way to get any emotion is to tell a tale in present tense....but the only way to tie them together is to narrate in past tense.

 

[Beerfish]

Cheers for that.

Could even have been written from.his diary I guess, hence the present tense and short sharp writing.

The lady said my big problem was switching from past to present tense too much but for me the only way to get any emotion is to tell a tale in present tense....but the only way to tie them together is to narrate in past tense.

Perhaps there's some kind of "tool" you can use to separate the different narratives? Or is it like.. moving from one to the other and back again in the space of a paragraph?

 

[Howard Moon]

Perhaps there's some kind of "tool" you can use to separate the different narratives? Or is it like.. moving from one to the other and back again in the space of a paragraph?

I guess mid tale I can often get side tracked and go off tangent for a joke or observation then slip back into the story. Might feel jerky to go present past present.... For someone who is trained to know better

 

[Doss]

I guess mid tale I can often get side tracked and go off tangent for a joke or observation then slip back into the story. Might feel jerky to go present past present.... For someone who is trained to know better

There's nothing wrong with that inherently, though.

I reckon if you can't enjoy a book that does sidetrack or go off on a tangent on occasion, you've got a short attention span. The side stories to the main course are usually absolutely crucial to understanding them, and getting their full impact across.

 

[Burzum]

Kong Skeeta Olly