TW Writers - Evaluate this segment of writing

"For you whom" is not proper English I don't believe.

Not like I give a shit, but you seemed to be going for a sort of proper English sort of thing there.
 
It Was a Beautiful Spring Day in Northern Vermont
By Brasstax

It was a beautiful spring day in Northern Vermont. The wind was just blowing perfectly for a little game I like to call "Jug Band Asshole". I walked to my favorite spot behind the old barn and made sure that grandma couldn't see me. She gets very mad when I play my little game.

I pulled down my pants and stood with my penis erect into the breeze. Then, I layed myself down upon the splendid ground. My balls were caught between my legs and squeezed a little. But, it wasn't unpleasant so I left them there.

I hoisted my ass into the air with my ankles back behind my ears. I grabbed my plush ass cheeks with my hands and spread my red ringed anus open wide. I felt the wind blowing across my bare ass. I adjusted my position until the wind blew across my gaping asshole just right. I listened - all of a sudden I heard it - the lovely WOOO WOOO WOOOO that is the sound of the Northern Vermont wind blowing across my bunghole like a man playing in a jug band.

I tuned the notes by squeezing and opening my ass entrance. The tune was going WOOO wooo WOOO wooo WOOO when all of a sudden my reverie was broken by grandma unceremoniously stopping my performance by shoving a dried up corn cob into my butthole. She chased me around with a cane until I ditched her in the hay barn.

I can't wait until tomorrow to try again.
 
CelticLegend said:
Did you buy and read "The First Five Pages" by Noah Lukeman?
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Not yet. I will get around to it. However the feedback I am getting here, while mixed and varied is still useful for several reasons. The feedback from writers is useful in tightening things up, dropping what shouldn't, and bringing out what should. And the feedback from those as clueless as me have still helped me to generate ideas on the direction I want to go and the style I want to go for.

As for writing scripts. For the most part, I don't want to be much of a writer when it comes down to it. Most of my movie ideas I have skeleton plots that I could throw at a writer and they could have a hay day turning into a script.

The role is more of the right to control artistic direction. I want the final say on how this looks, or how that plays out. Not in the narrow field of set and costumes but as an overall sense.

For example in an amazing movie like Hero - I would say, 'why did the Hero just die?' The writers would say 'blah blah blah' - I would call them out on it saying they 'are just trying to pull a cheap move to draw emotion from the audience; at the cost of ruining the last 10 minutes of an amazing film'. I would then have the scene re-written so it doesn't dumb down the end. (As a side note, every time I watch Hero, I leave with 10 minutes left and then go envision the ending differently, not that I have a problem with a Hero dying, but in this case I feel like they think I the viewer am dumb when they do this - as there is no good/worthy reason for him to die).
 
Well, have fun with it.

Later when you've gotten some experience with submitting your work, you'll find there are some things that absolutely need to be addressed before any script is considerable. That's why I recommend that book.

Movie ideas? That's a whole 'nother ball o' wax... something I have no knowledge of beyond the ordinary.
 
Shadow(of)Death said:
Perfect. That is the feedback I am looking for.

Yes this is sadly my downfall. I am a story teller, but not a writer. My true passion is to make movies. I have many interesting and unique ideas I want to see on the silver screen, why? So I can enjoy them. Honestly, I like these stories I have written soooo much I want to see them on the screen, and so therefore I put my self through this sort of stuff in hopes of breaking through somewhere. This story I felt had the best potential to be made into a book. So I am going to dump a lot of resources and time into writing this until it is a good read. I know the plot and story are there, but my ability to capture my thoughts and convey them to the reader in an interesting form will be a challenge.

I will be taking a lot of writing classes at the start of the year up at college, so hopefully that boosts this project up to publishing level.
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My advice is general rather than specific.

1. Read as much as you can. Stephen King says read four hours a day, write four hours a day. Well most of us can't afford that much time, but the point is, read a lot. Your style will improve massively with every book, even if it's in just one genre (by the way, what genre is this? Fantasy? Magic Realism?)

2. Take courses in writing.

3. Use a dictionary/thesaurus for every largish word you use to MAKE 100% SURE it has the EXACT TECHNICAL MEANING you want, not the one you "feel" the word should have.

4. Don't use capitalised words, or exclamation points. Just don't :p Buy a style manual to find out why.

5. Avoid cliches. This is a massive pitfall in writing. Why? Because if something "sounds right" to you, it's probably because you've heard the expression before (hence your use of "shock and awe" etc)... which means almost everyone else has heard it as well... which means that you absolutely should NOT use it. "Sounds right to you = don't use it" is a goddamn hard trick to master.

Your second segment is definately better than the first.

Also, I have the same problem regarding "seeing it as a movie and trying to put it on paper." One potential way to deal with this problem is to right from a character's point of view. Ie, don't describe anything except what that character sees and thinks). You can still create the "scenes" of the movie by jumping from one characters POV to another's every couple of pages, and using hundreds of extremely short chapters ala Dan Brown style. The added advantage of "super short chapters" is that you can write a first draft of each chapter (potentially) in one sitting, which can help keep things consistent. People say it's a cheap technique, but I doubt Dan gives a shit.
 
6. Don't try to sound fancier than you really are. Write the story you want to tell, don't try to wrap it in eloquent prose if that's not what you're comfortable with.
 
Your language is unnatural and awkward. You use words without a proper understanding of their context. It makes the piece sound disjointed, like you overused a thesaurus.

Addressing the reader in this type of narrative is appalling stylistically.

Your use of caps is banal.

This writing is at about a 10th grade level.
 
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The Flesch-Kincaid index is one measurement of what grade level a work is written at. Check out most any book you know of on Amazon.com. Search for "Text stats"... if they have it for the book, it'll show you what level it was written at.

Somewhat surprisingly, most popular fiction works are written at a 4th grade to 9th grade level.

Shadow's problem is the exact same problem I'm moving away from in my writing: the language being unnatural and awkwardly used/placed.. saying too much makes any sentence a labor to read, and often insults the reader by inserting too much description, as if the reader couldn't have imagined those details himself.

There is a balance, but that is where the artist's skill & experience come in. I'm still working on mine.
 
Yes balance is heard. I have one group saying - too much detail, while others say, 'not enough'.

One thing that I have learned and am trying to implement, thanks to feedback here, is placing as much detail into the sentence with as few words as possible, and as smooth flowing as possible.

I looked into the book, and I will try to find it at the library for a rental. If not I will pay the $20 it costs on amazon or what not.

As for my word use. I didn't use a thesaurus, except to make sure I had the correct meaning - but ofcourse that doesn't give me context sensitive meanings, and this is a downfall of mine, I love to use words that can be used in interesting place to keep my dialog to others fresh. People always find it interesting how I say stuff. For example instead of asking for gum, I would say 'breath augmentation object' I use to say device, but I don't think gum can be qualified as a device. However I was trying to throw in a little lingo that the character narration the novel may use. However this form of narrator may offend the reader to the point that the story of this character narrating the book is never made. So I will explore that further and if I can't make it work, and it isn't adding anything to the novel, then I will just pull the whole idea.
 
Shadow(of)Death said:
People always find it interesting how I say stuff.
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I disagree. I think people find it confusing. It's meaningless fluff that most will interpret as an attempt to increase word count. You need to settle on a style before writing anything. Otherwise the entire context of the story changes. You can't mess around with stuff like that, it ruins the development process.
 
We have words like gum for a reason: they're specific. A breath augmentation object could mean mints, cigarettes, or a piece of shit. It just makes what you're saying sound stupid and obtuse.
 
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