My condolences on your loss.

Backups, backups, backups, backups!

--Mike

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Monday, July 18, 2022 - 09:15 pm: Edit

Well, I rewrote those lost scenes. And a little more to boot. It's only cost me two days of effort. Only!

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Monday, July 18, 2022 - 09:41 pm: Edit

There's more than one way to skin a cat, and I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir here. But this is a discussion board, so I shall discuss.
The way I got it figured, at least right now, is that if you reduce a story to it's least common denominator, you end up with 4 basic parts.
1. the Intro: establishes character, setting, and a hook (something to get the reader to want to read)
2. the Setup: establishes plot and its relevance to the SFU, whether big, small, or Goldie Lox
3. the Showdown: establishes what the characters are made of, fulfills the plot, and dictates the consequences thereof
4. the Wrap up: allows time for the reader to digest the story, ponder the results, gives the characters a landing point for their arcs, and ties it all up with a pretty bow on top.
Hopefully.
Of course, opinions vary and what do I know anyway?
And like I say, this is reduced to it's lowest factor. Now I'm babbling.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, July 19, 2022 - 12:01 pm: Edit

Yeah, that formula probably works well for short stories. My problem with writing short stories is I like to give the characters some background, and I've never found enough room to do that AND tell the story. Ergo, I seem to be incapable of writing a true stand-alone short story.

Another option is do like M. Night Shyamalan and give it a surprise twist ending, but that does leave little room for a wrap up. You do have to be a bit careful, however, to wind it down and not leave it hanging. When I wrote my 38K-word mini-novel "So Clever", I was told the ending fell flat, so I had to write another 802 word to close it down. And to set it up for Part Two.


By the way, I like cats; I have three of them (Sherlock, Watson, and Mycroft) and have had house-cats my entire life. So I really Really REALLY hate that saying.


Garth L. Getgen

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Tuesday, July 19, 2022 - 04:10 pm: Edit

I have a dog who acts like a cat. I was thinking of giving him a Kzinti name. Something like: Dog-Who-Meows.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Tuesday, July 19, 2022 - 11:40 pm: Edit

Oh I hate to ask dumb questions, but I'm sure I read somewhere that fiction submissions ought to be in a certain type format.
I'm guessing it's not 11-point Calibri. I'll dive back into the input guides. . .

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, July 19, 2022 - 11:52 pm: Edit

It doesn't matter. Takes me about 3 seconds to change it to what I use.

The only stupid question is the one you did not ask, as that one cost me extra work.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, July 20, 2022 - 07:46 am: Edit

I am unsure if this is still true, but back in the day SVC wanted submissions in RTF because he couldn't open some .doc stuff. Or the layout was wonky.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 20, 2022 - 07:48 am: Edit

Yeah, docx stuff never worked right for me, but I can get it open.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Wednesday, July 20, 2022 - 01:15 pm: Edit

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, July 20, 2022 - 01:33 pm: Edit

I do know that SVC doesn't like two spaces between sentences. That's a habit I can't break, so I just have to remember to do a Replace All from two to one space before sending anything to him.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 21, 2022 - 12:49 am: Edit

Not an issue, Garth. I do that on every document anyway.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, July 21, 2022 - 07:45 am: Edit

Because this is an issue some care about. And some don't. America!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing#:~:text=This%20was%20French%20spacing%E2%80%94a,style%20used%20by%20traditional%20typesetters.

I am sure Jean has strong feelings on this!

By Steven Zamboni (Szamboni) on Thursday, July 21, 2022 - 01:06 pm: Edit

I used to clean up 1000-page technical manuals. I had a long list of search/replace strings to run before I could start working on anything because everyone insisted on using styles they vaguely remembered from their grade-school typewriter years. Double or triple or quintuple spacing was an easy one compared to some of their doozies.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Thursday, July 21, 2022 - 09:07 pm: Edit

I do whatever I have to in MS Word to make the green and red lines go away. They haunt me in my dreams.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Friday, July 22, 2022 - 01:35 pm: Edit

Yesterday evening I spent a little time with my Klingons. Their dialog sounded like the transcripts from an HR sponsored town-hall. I needed to toughen them up a little. And by a little, I mean a lot.

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Friday, July 22, 2022 - 04:19 pm: Edit

Tough, yes. But don't turn them into the impulsive berzerkers franchise trek often did.

The Klingons usually seen in fiction in the SFU are professional officers in a well-run space military. Granted, easily one of the most aggressive ones in the Alpha Octant, but professional. Their goals often don't align to the nobility of the Feds and others, but ships and crews are big investments not to be thrown away for a captain's personal glory.

A glorious charge into the enemy's photons with your ship shot out from under you may be cinematic, but if you live through it the Klingon admiralty will send you to a penal ship to learn your lesson (if you are lucky, if not you're looking at the stockade or worse).

Now, if your Klingon captain does somehow manage to pull off a victory through that charge, he is a little more likely to be noted and promoted, rather than cashiered the way some of the other empires might. Klingon warrior culture does have its quirks.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, July 23, 2022 - 01:59 pm: Edit

An idea I posted a while back, but it appears to have been lost in a purge of the BBS: the new version of Word has a text-to-speech feature. Let it read the story to you, and you'll pick up things that spell-check / grammar-check can't find such as wrong word or missing word errors.

For example, let's say Will wrote "A glorious charge into the enemy's photons with ship shot out from under you ...", the check would never find the missing word "your" in the phrase "... with your ship ..." If you have the computer read it aloud, that would probably jump out to you.


Speaking of spell-check, I posted my 7744-word short-story TIMELINES over on Trek BBS back in 2013. Each of the 19 segments had the title of the story, but spelled "TIMLINES". Aack!! I dropped an "E". It's been like that for NINE years, and nobody ever bothered to tell me I misspelled the title of my own story. {sigh}


Garth L. Getgen

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Saturday, July 23, 2022 - 07:25 pm: Edit

OH hey, Garth,
Over on the Trek BBS, your 2013 short story is missing the E in TIMELINES. just thought you'd like to know.

Helpful, aren't I?
Actually, those are some great suggestions. I'm taking them to heart and will give that text-to-speech thing a look.

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Saturday, July 23, 2022 - 11:46 pm: Edit

Question:
In the SFU, would a Klingon (or any) captain refer to transporter bombs as such, or might he call them space mines?
example: "Drop a space mine out the hatch. Let them chew on that if they are hungry!"
OR
"Drop one of our transporter bombs out of the shuttle bay. Let them chew on that if they are hungry!"

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 24, 2022 - 12:29 am: Edit

I used "transporter mine" in a story, but that one was geared more towards Trek fans more so than SFB players.

[sarcasm_on} And thank you so very much for the help spell-checking my story. {sarcasm_off}


Garth L. Getgen

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, July 24, 2022 - 09:53 am: Edit

Tim will be crushed that his lines are being edited out.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Sunday, July 24, 2022 - 01:10 pm: Edit

Hey, Joseph, that's a good question.

While I'm a LOUSY writer (), I have an idea...

(BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID!!)

What do you think of the idea of making up a list of terms you wish to use, setting them up as a true list (i.e.: NOT in contexts/sentences) and funning them by a friend who's also a fan of the SFU, perhaps one of the folks you game with?

IF, without any prompting, they identify what you're trying to say with the isolated terms, then I think there's a pretty good chance that even the densest of us (me ) will be able to understand when the terms are used in context.

As a "For Instance," if I were to present the term, "`Bomb," what is your interpretation of that? Would you interpret that as Transporter Bomb?

If not, then perhaps trying to use it with a phrase like "Roll the `Bomb out the hatch," might not be a good one.

On the other hand, if you did understand it as I intended, then the aforementioned phrase is likely to be well understood by most everyone.

Anyhow, as I said, I'm a LOUSY writer, but as my favorite philosopher says, "The wise can learn much from fools; far more than the fools will learn from the wise."

By Randy Green (Hollywood750) on Sunday, July 24, 2022 - 05:45 pm: Edit

Joseph, as Jeff said, if the reader can identify it from your writing, it should be ok. If the Captain orders a small mine to be rolled out of the shuttle bay, us SFU people will understand. Also, for what it's worth, transporter bomb has been used in more than one Captain's Log fiction story.

Good luck!

By Joseph Jackson (Bonneville) on Wednesday, July 27, 2022 - 01:24 pm: Edit

Had an idea for a Tholian adventure yarn of sorts. Hasn't really 'crystalized' yet.
Thought I'd start gathering some research material before, wait for it, things got too hot to handle.
I've got:
Away Team Log
The Tholian Will
CL #16
My question is: anyone know where some more Tholian goodies are hiding?