Charles_F_Bell wrote:

  In a manner of sci-fi/fantasy style I wrote a chapter in Remembrance and Reconciliation (Pristine Universe) depicting a kind of insanity that must have had stasis before the reader enters it. It does in the entirety of what happens before it. There can be multiple statements of stasis in a novel. But when I took that chapter and converted it to a short story with an altered stasis (minimal) it does not really work as a self-contained story.

I thought it amusing when you found fault in review of Pristine Universe with the production quality of the audio version of a narrative segment I concocted using MS-Word synth voices.  Anthony Hopkins was unavailable then, too.

Kdot wrote:

To hold Shakespeare's Tragedies as "episodic" makes the point that plays, movies and tv are a form different than a novel, and it is a mistake to formulate a novel in the same fashion.

I also have reservations about formulating a novel in a structure other than that of a novel. Won't stop me from massaging some words around the concept. Easily abandoned if it proves unworkable

Suppose you sit to watch a movie and you see a black screen and dialogue starts up and runs for five minutes,  then flashes of scene and action, perhaps with dialogue


Consider this StarCraft intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbeoSPqRs4

Where is stasis here? I would hazard to suggest it is about three cinematics ago when Mengsk creates the Terran Empire. None of that matters here. It's just random violence and disjoint narration. Yet, the uninitiated viewer can spot the opposing sides. Make an educated guess who the protagonist might be.

The fact the producers found it necessary to present some statement of stasis through dubbing in voice-over in a medium where it should not be necessary for an audience that does not favor narration, or certainly a narration that is inartfully and inaudibly voiced (Anthony Hopkins must have been unavailable) demonstrates the strength of the novel, as it ought to be, to build and present a universe by the written word. The novel concept for the English language,  invented through the mid-18th century Tristram Shandy, has had value through its power of the written word which I think should be preserved rather than replaced by these things so eminently presented here on TNBW, the  inartful proto-movies, -game, -tv scripts.

Here, I question the traditional stasis-first concept. To what extent can a novel borrow from a video game? Can a novel launch with  a "Here's Bob and he's fighting for his life"? Can we infer the inciting incident from this mere statement? Certainly not - we merely know there was one and presume it will be related to us at some point.

Presentation of stasis is not through a fixed manner, only that something of that be presented to the reader at a time before change of stasis. It can be a misdirection, as I have done in Remembrances and Reconciliation.

Regarding Legend, I believe the stasis is not presented until the third episode. That's a rather long wait for such a complex world.

Yes.  In a manner of sci-fi/fantasy style I wrote a chapter in Remembrance and Reconciliation (Pristine Universe) depicting a kind of insanity that must have had stasis before the reader enters it. It does in the entirety of what happens before it. There can be multiple statements of stasis in a novel. But when I took that chapter and converted it to a short story with an altered stasis (minimal) it does not really work as a self-contained story.

Kdot wrote:

MacBeth Act I Scene I

When shall we three meet again?

Is stasis merely that the witches meet on some agreed upon schedule? I dare say that stasis is introduced in the second chapter rather than the beginning of the story.

Indeed in Macbeth and Hamlet the story-telling of status quo ante is sprinkled through the plays, but this in a way tells us how not to write a novel.

I was going to make mention of this in a review of your Tia of the Stratosphere versus Legend One. I was able to glean more of stasis from one later (#30) chapter of Tia, not having read anything other than chapters 29 and 30,  than in 3  Chapters of a full episode of Legend.  I believe the word "episode" is crucial to understand that you are certainly writing Legend as if a movie or TV show and Tia not so much or not at all. To hold Shakespeare's Tragedies as "episodic" makes the point that plays, movies and tv are a form different than a novel, and it is a mistake to formulate a novel in the same fashion.  Suppose you sit to watch a movie and you see a black screen and dialogue starts up and runs for five minutes,  then flashes of scene and action, perhaps with dialogue, appear periodically for the next two hours still filled mostly with talking and blackness.  That is a novel with action and dialogue and no stasis.

Even though the play is older than the novel, Homeric story-telling is far older than Golden Age Greece plays. Homer clearly sets stasis in a mere 174 words (Butler translation), not about the Trojan War (which comes later) but about the heart of the story - which is to tell why Achilles is so upset, then later about the consequences of his pulling out of action, then later what brings him back in. 

In spite of the bromide show, don't tell in an age of TV & Movie, the art of storytelling for writing is telling.

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Jove and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people, because the son of Atreus had dishonoured Chryses his priest. Now Chryses had come to the ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, and had brought with him a great ransom: moreover he bore in his hand the sceptre of Apollo wreathed with a suppliant's wreath and he besought the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, who were their chiefs.

Stasis: The period of equilibrium or status quo that exists at the beginning of the story when all the forces are not yet in conflict.

Intrusion or Inciting Action: the single event in the story that sparks the main action. It is the thing that comes along and happens to upset the status quo or stasis

exposition, conflict, climax, resolution / denouement

Dialogue and plot are merely the means to get from here stasis to there resolution   Without purpose from getting from here to there, dialogue and plot are only white noise of things moving and making sounds.

Stasis: The period of equilibrium or status quo that exists at the beginning of the story when all the forces are not yet in conflict.

Intrusion or Inciting Action: the single event in the story that sparks the main action. It is the thing that comes along and happens to upset the status quo or stasis

exposition, conflict, climax, resolution / denouement

Dialogue and plot are merely the means to get from here stasis to there resolution   Without purpose from getting from here to there, dialogue and plot are only white noise of things moving and making sounds.

Stasis: The period of equilibrium or status quo that exists at the beginning of the story when all the forces are not yet in conflict.

Intrusion or Inciting Action: the single event in the story that sparks the main action. It is the thing that comes along and happens to upset the status quo or stasis

exposition, conflict, climax, resolution / denouement

Dialogue and plot are merely the means to get from here stasis to there resolution   Without purpose from getting from here to there, dialogue and plot are only white noise of things moving and making sounds.

Dirk B. wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
Dirk B. wrote:

Here's what I ended up with. A bit of a mix of everyone's advice. A full quote of Psalm 140 would put even Catholics to sleep, so I kept just the first few verses to remind a Catholic/Christian reader. I suspect I'll lose most non-Christian readers with the free chapter on Kindle (three prayers in the first scene). Obviously, the first draft is Catholic-heavy. I may scale it back eventually.

My thanks to everyone for their input. Any further suggestions are welcome.

Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers;
    protect me from those who are violent,
2 who plan evil things in their minds
    and stir up wars continually.
3 They make their tongue sharp as a snake’s,
    and under their lips is the venom of vipers.

...   yeah calming.   All this fuss, and you could have just had the priest say: "God help us, please."  Stripping the content and context should send you straight to hell.

I condensed (stripped) content for the reasons already given. I disagree that I stripped the context. People pray psalms all the time even though they're not David on the run from Saul. Technically, I actually "adapted" the psalm, which your Bible quote shows. Specifically, I changed "me" to "us", so I'm leaning toward saying adapted rather than prayed the psalm, even though it's a technical detail, IMO.

Your attention to detail is impressive.
Dirk

Words have meaning and with intent they are included by the author. They are not "useless." I think it is disingenuous, at best, to adapt an edited version of what is a rather lengthy supplication by an individual to his God over to a collective to their Lord {*}. The main implication here is that your communication to others not fully cognizant of the actual words of the Bible as intended by the divinely inspired authors through your edited version creates a meme of falsehood regarding Psalm 140.  You stumbled upon the remaining reason, apart from aspects of ritual and bureaucratic process -- and that the Bishop of Rome was created Pope in wholly secular process --  the RCC exists: that as an indivdual you have no capability to interpret the Bible by yourself in reading it. The Second Vatican Council addressed this directly and at least conceded 450 years after Luther that the individual is involved and he is not just a vessel of unthinking cerebral matter as the medieval peasant might have been perceived to be.

{*}The word Lord does come directly from Domine, but dominus in supplication is not always the same in meaning as in ancient semitic languages.  see: a tiny portion of  the wrinkle here:

http://kurios.homestead.com/marya_the_l … amaic.html

in the argument it is a mistake to have used the English word lord that has strong secular uses as in master over slave, so that in OT has that meaning but in NT and Christianity does not - that OT God, the rule maker, is master over slave, but NT God, not so much.

Dirk B. wrote:

Here's what I ended up with. A bit of a mix of everyone's advice. A full quote of Psalm 140 would put even Catholics to sleep, so I kept just the first few verses to remind a Catholic/Christian reader. I suspect I'll lose most non-Christian readers with the free chapter on Kindle (three prayers in the first scene). Obviously, the first draft is Catholic-heavy. I may scale it back eventually.

Romano’s heart pounded and he trembled. He knelt and prayed one of King David’s psalms for protection of the orphanage. “Deliver us, O Lord, from evildoers; protect us from those who are violent, who plan evil things…” The psalm’s lengthy verses calmed Romano. He finished with, “Amen.”

My thanks to everyone for their input. Any further suggestions are welcome.

Deliver me, O Lord, from evildoers;
    protect me from those who are violent,
2 who plan evil things in their minds
    and stir up wars continually.
3 They make their tongue sharp as a snake’s,
    and under their lips is the venom of vipers.

...   yeah calming.   All this fuss, and you could have just had the priest say: "God help us, please."  Stripping the content and context should send you straight to hell.

The plan:

I've since decided I don't like skipping prayers that I mention explicitly such as the psalm. I'd like to include the actual prayer, but cherry pick what the priest says. He essentially speaks a "new" prayer by incorporating the most relevant parts of the psalm

Is a Christian apostasy, or let's say heterodoxy, from both the (traditional) Protestant and Roman perspective. The "cherry picking" and most "relevant" part. King Bubba Bible does the same, and KJV is not sanctioned by the RCC, so is not different than King Bubba's, and  its quotation is heresy, in spite of qualification through the VCII, and we're all better than muslims and their freakin' Koran, any way state of mind.  Quotation must be in full and only from The Catholic Revised Standard or New RSV. Or you go straight to hell because Dog got around to telling the disappeared Pope, Benedict XVI,  Limbo does not exist upon Dog's changing his mind 800 years later about the Holy Indulgences scam.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:
vern wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:

It has been revealed by the noted theosophical scholar, Emo Philips, the one true faith of the Christian religion is now certainly the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council 0f 1912 whose King Bubba Bible begins Psalm 140: Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from Trump.

LOL Unfortunately for you, it is too late to preserve you from Trump (aka Putin's Puppet or Pee Pee for short); well, that is until the pathological liar fires himself from office. But you served him well. Hey, maybe you can tell Pee Pee how to get Mexico to pay for his Great Big Beautiful Wall. Take care. Vern

Would that my words were true or a genuine expression of opinion for any reasonable person, any reply true or false might apply, but I keep to  the absurdity and vapid content of this thread and its genesis, viz., Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), for, in part, the wording of any prayer from the same source, The Bible, is not the same according to Jew, Catholic or Protestant, nor certainly to any atheist who will deny its divine origin whether that be opinion or statement of fact which is relevant.

Temple Wang wrote:

/Delusional-Disorder-1.jpg

Oh, look at the delusional ESL student thinking she understands the English language yet.

Seriously?  That’s all you got?

  It comes down to your posting an irrelevant-to the-topic ad-hominem picture (evidently  because English words, grammar, syntax, and contextual meaning still come hard to you), and I respond with relevant fact concerning your feeble capability to perform on TNBW.

Temple Wang wrote:

/Delusional-Disorder-1.jpg

Oh, look at the delusional ESL student thinking she understands the English language yet.

vern wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:

It has been revealed by the noted theosophical scholar, Emo Philips, the one true faith of the Christian religion is now certainly the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council 0f 1912 whose King Bubba Bible begins Psalm 140: Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from Trump.

LOL Unfortunately for you, it is too late to preserve you from Trump (aka Putin's Puppet or Pee Pee for short); well, that is until the pathological liar fires himself from office. But you served him well. Hey, maybe you can tell Pee Pee how to get Mexico to pay for his Great Big Beautiful Wall. Take care. Vern

Would that my words were true or a genuine expression of opinion for any reasonable person, any reply true or false might apply, but I keep to  the absurdity and vapid content of this thread and its genesis, viz., Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962), for, in part, the wording of any prayer from the same source, The Bible, is not the same according to Jew, Catholic or Protestant, nor certainly to any atheist who will deny its divine origin whether that be opinion or statement of fact which is relevant.

It has been revealed by the noted theosophical scholar, Emo Phillips, the one true faith of the Christian religion is now certainly the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council 0f 1912 whose King Bubba Bible begins Psalm 140: Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man: preserve me from Trump.

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B Douglas Slack wrote:

Tomorrow morning, early, I'm due at the hospital for cataract surgery. Not too worried, but it will interfere somewhat with reviewing and writing/editing my own stuff. Supposed to be an easy thing, but one never knows.

Bill

Easy peasy.

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Came across this somewhere, too.

1. Protagonist aged 13-21
2. Coming-of-age elements

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Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:

I am in the middle of my first attempt at an actual YA story. What is the word count requirement for a YA novel?

I think the word count for the first Harry Potter book at 75k is the upper limit, and that is only because it is not completely within the YA genre and draws the older who tend to want all those details in a novel of 100k+. I would say the length of a novella 20-50k for YA. (For all we know J.K. Rowling stretched her thin story to appease the publishing industry). Novellas are thought to be unwanted by publishers for the only reason that it has been uneconomical to print them. In an age of digitizing, that is irrelevant. Consider also that of a 100k novel only 30k is used to make a 2-hr movie, and that is plenty to have a story with all the plot and character basis points. Philip K. Dick's Minority Report - 14k; Dickens'  A Christmas Carol 29k  Massive tomes like Anna Karenina and War and Peace have not and cannot be made into successful movies, only rather into artsy BBC/PBS TV series, not thought to be for a YA audience.

I wonder if it's a good thing the have add words rather than take them out.

No. From a literary point of view.  War and Peace is incredibly dull to read if the words padding it out are read and not skipped over. Unfortunately, the 40+ generations have no idea that a short-form book should be read more like a short story in which nearly every word counts as having meaning, and they will just skim over out of habit from reading 75k+ novels that have plenty of padding, so that older than the YA audience has a cultural inheritance based on the economics of printing books, not on the value of quality of writing.  I would say historical novels and character-driven and theme-driven literary fiction (like Atlas Shrugged) are exceptions, not for YA audience in any case, but also make lousy movies, Gone with the Wind the exception.

Temple Wang wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
Temple Wang wrote:

Ah, don’t bother.  I doubt anyone’s reading your profile page either ...

You can invite Charly Ring, Bevin Wallace, Bill Weldon, and Van Alsen.

When I see you go off into your conspiracy theory blathering.

A conspiracy requires more than one actor.

Temple Wang wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
Temple Wang wrote:

Oh, goody!  TNBW’s streaming “Battle of the Language Pedants” again, staring fan favorite, Pulitzer Prize winning author of (seriously, I shit you not) “Examination of Serious Coincidence Through Dialogue with The Dark Prevailer, Part 24,“ and humorist extraordinaire——*drum roll*——Charles Eff Bell!!!

A blurb for my profile page. I'd say thank you, but no.

Ah, don’t bother.  I doubt anyone’s reading your profile page either ...

You can invite Charly Ring, Bevin Wallace, Bill Weldon, and Van Alsen.

Temple Wang wrote:

Oh, goody!  TNBW’s streaming “Battle of the Language Pedants” again, staring fan favorite, Pulitzer Prize winning author of (seriously, I shit you not) “Examination of Serious Coincidence Through Dialogue with The Dark Prevailer, Part 24,“ and humorist extraordinaire——*drum roll*——Charles Eff Bell!!!

A blurb for my profile page. I'd say thank you, but no.

Kdot wrote:

hey all. Sorry to wade into this. Here's some interesting data.

Note: Germanic languages take prepositions on their native verbs. They generally don't on borrowed Latin verbs.
examples:
Eng: Bob climbed up
Lat: Bob ascended
Eng: Bob climbed down (Remember this beastie from another thread?)
Lat: Bob descended

This is part of a general debate French speakers have learning English:
Bob walked across the street
Bob traversait la rue
In Romance languages you just cross the street. It's hard to understand why in English you have to cross-across the street.

Back to the point. Stolen verbs in English don't need prepositions. "Stood" is not stolen. Ergo it takes the preposition.
That said, "Bob crossed the street" has worked its way into the language illegally. If English had language police, this use would have been banned 100 years ago, and the language would still look like Elizabethan times.

Consider: "Bob crossed the street"
By default, middle English speakers would ask: Crossed with what?
Modern English speaker: Crossed intransitively, of course.

In German you can't simply say "to go the street" but rather übergehen die Straße -- Helmut geht über die Straße. Old English words like "go" (gān) and "stand" (standan) like Modern English have context given to them by use with prepositions or adverbs because the words being so ancient have several shades of meaning, and stand up will have a different meaning than stand down even to the extent of having totally different but not opposite meanings.  Bob crossed the street is a slippery hybrid abbreviation ("illegal")  for Bob goes across the street because literally Bob would be making the sign of the crucifix, or an "x" over or on the street.  Words and phrases that morph into less precise meaning is illegal (against institutions of culture) in the sense that we should not give in to deconstructionist mindset when communicating or engage ourselves in NewSpeak that deliberately obfuscates by blurring and obliterating meaning {see: George Orwell).

vern wrote:

The problem with language police is they may be correct in one sense, but wrong in another.
[...]

more deconstructionist babbling.

Si je ne peux pas danser, je ne voulais pas faire partie de votre révélation. Excusez-moi, révolution.

Temple Wang wrote:

“I don’t give a shit what you say, Vern.  I’m going to stick every useless word I can imagine in my prose, and you can’t stop me.  You or Empress Wang and her ‘delete’ remarks.  I’ll tell you, I’ve had just about enough of that persnickety Chinese bitch.”

... stick ... into ... 

To stand up specifically refers to the process of moving from a seated or bent position to an upright position; obverse, sit down; therefore, that useless word up changes the meaning from a vague standing to a clear movement of action. This is probably not something taught in ESL.  Stood up from the table is precise and stood from the stable is vague, possibly from any manner of distance, except to say not sitting at, near, under, behind, on, or at a mile away.

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j p lundstrom wrote:

Looking over the homepage, I see no one except Marilyn has bothered to post a cover image for their poem or short story. Fortunately, the book authors have done a good job. Thank you, authors of books.

What many don't realize is that the written word is only one form of communication. Readers are often drawn to a book by the cover. It's not an insult to a writer or a reader. It's just the way some people's brains are wired. Mine is one of those. In school, I had a hard time deciding between a major in art or language.

Agreed.


j p lundstrom wrote:

While we're talking about the increasingly lazy attitude of members (in other threads), think about this: why should we care about your work if you don't?

On the other hand, it's not a simple or easy thing to superimpose the lettering of Title and Author of decent quality. Upload a plain picture, sure, but going to a paint program -- and all that climbing the learning curve only to produce a mediocre result -- for a short story seems obsessive.

Dirk B. wrote:

After:

Romano decided he’d take a wait-and-see approach. In a few days, Alessandro would probably have another seizure, and he would have his answer. In spite of himself, he felt a slight thrill at the possibility that Connor was right. If only he could still feel the Holy Spirit the way Connor did. It had been so long. Yet, even Mother Teresa suffered dark, spiritual emptiness, in her case for almost half a century. And, unlike her, Romano was no saint. The knot in his stomach returned, reminding him he had an anguished prayer to finish.

All opposed?

Not that I am one to complain about this, but I'll do this out of evil fun, the paragraph just runs on and on with TMI. That is why in first inspection it is difficult to follow who is doing what for which reason -- and Mother Teresa joins in, too.  Best then to keep names instead of pronouns. Would it not be even greater fun to substitute gender-neutral pronouns?