pchis1 wrote:A pale shadow falls across my desk. A hot hand squeezes the shoulder of my cotton shirt. ‘Curran, come with me. Now, please.’


First line of Red Skies Over Solapur, my novel set in India, 1946/7.

[waits patiently]

oh my.

[crouches in preparation]
[pupils dilate]

Basically, I think I’m asking for “permission” to keep going. no, i don,t think you are. i,ve seen this before quite a few times. this is you asking for permission to quit. sorry. permission denied. starting stories is easy. finishing them is hard and doing it well takes practice. i don,t care if t...

hahaha
thanks for the share

This is what my life has become - sitting in front of yet another inane television sitcom or overacted docudrama, it’s hard to tell the difference nowadays. I’m drinking an oversized glass of wine - enough to do more than dull the pain. is that the opening of your wip or a cry for help if the latte...

Bridey wrote:PrinceCorwin, write however you want to write: find your own voice and be proud of it.

absolutely. i,d remind pc, though, that some voices are more appealing to different audiences than others. some audiences will contain very sensitive individuals, apparently.

if it,s a direct replacement you,re after, and you,re not happy with the estate-authorised continuations, you can look to some of parker,s own influences. raymond chandler is a good place to start. he only wrote 6/7 novels, but parker himself wrote two additional books with chandler,s philip marlowe...

thanks, hugh.

if possible, format as normal dialogue (including using said as the tagging verb) and have the context highlight the telepathic nature of the communication.

as a general rule... defend creative suggestions that you feel strongly about with your editor, but -- assuming they're a pro and not just someone random you met in starbucks -- simply defer to them on anything to do with formatting, layout, etc. although, i,d definitely listen to them with an open ...

unless you are writing an epistolary novel -- e.g, lucy kellaway,s martin lukes effort a few years back -- i,d suggest your 1st person narratives use the sort of language a person would speak out loud if telling the story to a friend some time after the event. so textspeak is out, unless that charac...

gr wrote:How did I not know about this?!

"A Writer and Three Script Editors Walk into a Bar"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3UxDiFgBqQ

-gr

i don,t get it. why is he so upset with so much useful input to help strengthen his premise.

overly nostalgic reminiscence for long-forgotten topic

ugh

terrible news. one step closer to having another barrier to creativity removed, allowing thousands more talentless hacks to generate thoughtless drivel on the move.

floss
-- sent from my iPhone

Hugh wrote:Yes, good to see Floss back on the forums (particularly when I agree with, er, him). It's been too long.

thanks hugh. it has been a while, but people stopped asking for advice so i stopped giving it.