You could make this action risky by adding known and unknown likely consequences: energy spilling back and damaging the source vessel or others near it, energy reflecting back into the weapons and the power source behind them, perhaps with energy stored and falling back like a heavy weight that slips loose, or energy venting in unknown ways through the extra dimensions, as a consequence of loss of accuracy at higher power, or of overloading space itself, or of some ensign who won't stop chewing gum.

This Luuurker is okay with the lisssst.

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(14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Look at the few differences and decide for yourself which is the more vigorous prose.  Grammarly dropped a comma; tell me which reads better.

My guess is that my vivid, energetic prose defeated or flustered most of its algorithms.  It fell back on a stylebook comma rule and the reduction of more colorful prepositional phrases to adverb and adjective modifiers.  Its first change also turned a precise description (with an elided 'that is') into flavorless, stale mush of the sort favored by academics when pushing agendas

'budgeted as an adjective' reads like someone trying to hide a staff party in the quarterly budget.  Has  Grammarly has been helping with too much academic administrivia?

The Great Crash destroyed the only complete copies of my Comma Heresy Manifesto.  I should reconstitute it.

Perhaps Grammarly's last name is Mediocre?

54

(14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

George FLC wrote:

njc - well said. Perhaps I should go over your grammar in this comment. :-)

Have at it.

55

(14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Welcome!

To follow up on George FLC's comment on grammar, and since I'm mostly lurking these days, here's my minimized lecture on grammar:

Grammar is not just a thing right or wrong.  Grammar is a tool of the writer.  In English's magnificently rich grammar there are usually many ways to present a structure of ideas.  In a complex sentence, we choose which idea deserves the high seat of the main clause, and which ideas should support from subordinate clauses.  We decide which modifiers deserve the weight of a relative clause, which justify a prepositional phrase, and which can be budgeted an adjective or adverb, according to how much of the reader's attention we want to spend on each.  We order our clauses and sentences with care so that the prose flows smoothly through one topic and into the next, with a minimum of jumping back and forth.

The Mad Amos Malone stories by Alan Dean Foster have a numbed of situations with excessive heat, where Malone is engaged in contests with witches or demons.  They're collected under that title.  You might find something interesting in there.

Interview with an actual, certified, official exorcist: https://youtu.be/mX7L68p9exk?si=Qex7b5R6VctZKnm9 .

"Free Stars" saves half the syllables in the battle cry.  Making the name "Free and Sovereign Stars" would allow this.

Dirk B. wrote:

The islands were renamed after someone named Bezos (who could it be?) from the past (and why were they renamed?). I can't imagine. smile Everything else is left up to the imagination of the reader.

Not Jersey Mike  Bezos ?

The Hawaiin islands were, IIRC, originally the Sandwich Islands.  Maybe they should be bought by Subway?

Janet (AJ) Reid wrote:
njc wrote:

Here, mostly lurking.  I've been helping a formerly active member, Apricots, who published her first book about a year ago.  Most of the work on that book--first of a trilogy--was done here before the mechano-amnesia.  The book is =Starlight Jewel=, published under the name E.L.Lyons, and no, it's not a romance.  It's a character-driven fantasy which includes a romance, but the world and its magic are quite original.

lol you know me well! I was going to ask if it's a Romance.
Lurking is good. I'm glad to see you around!

Well, heck.  You might enjoy it.  El has a way with characters.

Dirk B. wrote:

> E.L.Lyons
What a great name.

Better in that her first name gives the nickname 'El(l)'

Here, mostly lurking.  I've been helping a formerly active member, Apricots, who published her first book about a year ago.  Most of the work on that book--first of a trilogy--was done here before the mechano-amnesia.  The book is =Starlight Jewel=, published under the name E.L.Lyons, and no, it's not a romance.  It's a character-driven fantasy which includes a romance, but the world and its magic are quite original.

I told you, that's not a filbert flange, it's a groelder shoulder.  A self-sealing stem bolt will take care of that nicely.

You want tech with materials.

"mimetic polycarbon"  ---Wm. Gibson, =Neuromancer=.

https://www.sciencealert.com/revolution … and-nerves

Look up heterojunctions, strained silicon, strained GAs (gallium arsenide), and quantum dots.  Also angled (rotated) graphene layers.

Oh, heck, look up resublimated thiotimoline.  Maybe you can use it smile .

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(2 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

If it can be sealed or dogged, it must be a hatch.

69

(7 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I'd like to blame Würd, since MicroSlough does deserve most of the blame (eg. Magick Quotation Marks).  But changes in The (One and Many) Right Way to store and display characters have turned various real problems into mud to be tracked everywhere.

Start, if you are of stout heart, with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers … racter_Set .  Chase the links, especially the ones into UniCode, and venture upon the Basic Multilingual  Plane.

I've been off the air with various distractions, including the opportunity to do a beta read.  I expect to finish ome review and do at least one more over the weekend.

I'll try to get to a few reviews tonight.  I'm still looking at Kirsey's backstory, considering how to change B1 and B2, and not getting very far with the overall story arc.  I don't like the start I have on K's life story, and have a direction I like more,  but there are details that have to mesh, and fit with tbe timeframe.  Nor do I have a title.  But the big thing is to get Kirsey's parents together, with their circumstances and baggage, and do it in about 6,000 interesting words.  "Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak" just won't do.

And of course, projects and projects.

But the subject of the sentence is no longer the topic subject.  Keeping the two aligned is one use of the passive.

Passives have other uses, and one just bubbled up in my head:  'They were beset with problems' can set the topic, an introduction before presenting the bill of particulars.  You could force it into the grammatical active: 'They had many problems', but the 'They' are passive victims either way, and the sentence has less force, perhaps due to the less vivid verb, perhaps due to the mismatch between grammar and meaning.

I've got LOTS to catch up on with everybody.  I've not disappeared,  but been distracted, and have just learned why I've been unable to get the holes I drill in metal to stay where they need to be.  (My pilot holes were too shallow.  Drill'em deep enough to get the full width of the final drill guided into the metal by the pilot hole!) and have to catch up after that.

There are also some things that naturally fall into the passive voice: "I was born in 1966 ..."  It also works well for certain types of statements: "I'd been told that people here were aloof.  Sometimes I wondered if they could speak English."  "I was taught to use a comma before or after direct address."  And sometimes it signals weasel-wording, and sometimes the active subject is unkown or irrelevant:  "The monument was erected after the great flood in '53."  Passive voice has a place, but it usually lacks color and force, unless the topic provides it:  "I've been arrested, twice, for letting my ice-cream cone drip on the police station steps."

It's best when you don't notice it.