I have an idea

ProjectX2

Don't expect me to take you with me when I go to s
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Sep 15, 2004
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For a while, this forum has been pretty dead. The only thing that seems to have any interest is the UC Flash. I know people can be discouraged by people not reading their story, which is why I have an idea.

Essentially, I will "produce" your story - read it, edit it, give you feedback and ideas, try and help get attention for it, heck, even co-write it if you need it. I've been in a creative lull for a while now and I'm hoping to get inspired to actually write something and hopefully this little experiment will invigorate this forum.

I doubt this will work - it sounds a bit pretentious but I'm not trying to be. I'm just going to hopefully be able to help you get your story posted and read. So people, get to work!
 
I can probably write up a 5 to 6 page non-epic for such an event. We'll see.
 
For a while, this forum has been pretty dead. The only thing that seems to have any interest is the UC Flash. I know people can be discouraged by people not reading their story, which is why I have an idea.

Essentially, I will "produce" your story - read it, edit it, give you feedback and ideas, try and help get attention for it, heck, even co-write it if you need it. I've been in a creative lull for a while now and I'm hoping to get inspired to actually write something and hopefully this little experiment will invigorate this forum.

I doubt this will work - it sounds a bit pretentious but I'm not trying to be. I'm just going to hopefully be able to help you get your story posted and read. So people, get to work!

Take a look at Metro as I post it up.
 
I've been meaning to read your newest chapter. Keep forgetting.

And summer time usually means a dead fiction forum. A new Scientifically Doomed will be up Monday.
 
People usually like to relax during the summer, so writing kind of drops off. Plus we didn't do the usual Challenge writing thread due to an apparent lack of interest.

SSJMole had at one time offered to start a Story Review group. This would be similar to what ProjectX2 is suggesting. The problem is getting people to 1) commit to such a group and 2) keep up with the reading and reviewing. But it would be another way to insure that authors' stories got some attention.

There's no reason why a few other people couldn't offer their services as editors as well, so ProjectX2 doesn't have to do all the work himself.

And this reminds me -- it's time to go through the forum and see what stories are still in progress and which ones have been abandoned, and maybe give a few authors a bit of a poke to get them back to writing.
 
People usually like to relax during the summer, so writing kind of drops off. Plus we didn't do the usual Challenge writing thread due to an apparent lack of interest.

SSJMole had at one time offered to start a Story Review group. This would be similar to what ProjectX2 is suggesting. The problem is getting people to 1) commit to such a group and 2) keep up with the reading and reviewing. But it would be another way to insure that authors' stories got some attention.

There's no reason why a few other people couldn't offer their services as editors as well, so ProjectX2 doesn't have to do all the work himself.

And this reminds me -- it's time to go through the forum and see what stories are still in progress and which ones have been abandoned, and maybe give a few authors a bit of a poke to get them back to writing.

I'm always happy to critique/edit/ghostwrite/whatever. Sometimes I need a kick in the shins to remind me, though.
 
Okay Proj. Here's something you could give me some advice on. I've been unable to sleep all night and eventually I got jotting and I've got a little piece of back and forth that's mainly just monologue, but it's the wedge that's supposed to explain the time travel element in a story. Give me some criticism. Edit it. I was going to post it up as a thread of its own, but it's really too short for that.

Anyway, the setup. Jack is a post-modern saboteur who's fairly green talking to his handler. In the present, Bugsy Siegel's secret vault has been discovered in the Flamingo Hotel in Vegas, and as a big television event, this douchebag television personality who's sort of a mix of Ryan Seacrest and Geraldo Riviera is going to open it up and see what's inside, on national television! *gasp* And upstairs, a big obnoxious MTV-style party. The thing is, there's nothing in the vault. Bugsy was broke. He pumped all of his money as well as huge sums of money from other investors, into what seemed like a sinking ship. And then he was shot in the head for it at his girlfriend's house, and some of the bullets ended up shattering a Bacchus statue. And then the casino went to make countless dollars. The casino changed ownership before Bugsy's actual murder and underwent renovations. So the main line is, Jack goes back in time, steals the statue before the murder and then plants it in the vault shortly before the renovations start which cover up the vault (and therefore before Bugsy's murder). And this is the handler explaining it to Jack (leaving out a few fine details).

"Time travel's a funny thing, Jack.
You've created a hypothetical reality.
And sure, there's.... Well, countless, Jack, infinite variations of these.
I mean, there's the West. And then there's the Wild West. and the Wild, Wild West. The Spaghetti West. The Paperback West. The Brokeback West. The True Grit West. There's probably a few Vampire Wests floating around. There's Vampire Everythings floating around.
There's men in caps and men in space and men in gnawing gnostic cages.
But that's beside the point. Those hypotheticals are chained to different orbits. Too large, too divergent. Mostly...
The point, is the presence of sentient life at a place where it is not intended to be creates a suggestion that must be tested. Since the divergence is witnessed by sentient life, it must be; at first a pebble caught in our metaphysical orbit, the divergences in timelines minor on a global scale, but as you start to...."
"Biff it up?"
"Hm? Sure, sure. As you start to monkey with the timeliness, the divergences grow and the new time line is big as a baseball then a watermelon then a moon, and suddenly these timelines are tangoing neck to neck the same way a meteor tangos with a planet."
"Sounds apocalyptic."
"No. Reality's good at mending itself. When they merge back together, they'll find a comfortable median of the deviations..."
"Mostly."
"Mostly. Some moments have more gravity than others. The truly mythic ones--"
"Hitler murdered! Dinosaurs saved from extinction! Bruce Lee hired as Kwai Chang Caine!"
"Yes...... They'll find a way to reconcile. But there will be jagged edges. Ghost stories. Things generally not fitting together the way they should, as reality insures that the myth is properly fulfilled. Reality will rebend itself, if required."
"And those little shreds of orbiting hypothetical come plummeting down"
"Like shrapnel from heaven."

Anyway, the idea is that the legend of Bugsy Siegel that cannot be altered is that nine shots ripped through Bugsy's body while he sat in Virginia Hill's home, and four of those bullets shattered the marble Bacchus statue that set atop her piano. But the Bacchus statue wasn't there because of Jack. So, the four bullets that should have shattered the statue have been waiting in limbo, waiting for a witness to step in front of the statue and finish the circuit. So our douchebag reporter opens up the vault and finishes the sequence. Four bullets from nowhere in time, hammering through him and busting their way right through the statue, finishing the circuit, fixing the legend. Ninja time travel assassination, *****es.

Does that make any sense?
 
Okay Proj. Here's something you could give me some advice on. I've been unable to sleep all night and eventually I got jotting and I've got a little piece of back and forth that's mainly just monologue, but it's the wedge that's supposed to explain the time travel element in a story. Give me some criticism. Edit it. I was going to post it up as a thread of its own, but it's really too short for that.

Anyway, the setup. Jack is a post-modern saboteur who's fairly green talking to his handler. In the present, Bugsy Siegel's secret vault has been discovered in the Flamingo Hotel in Vegas, and as a big television event, this douchebag television personality who's sort of a mix of Ryan Seacrest and Geraldo Riviera is going to open it up and see what's inside, on national television! *gasp* And upstairs, a big obnoxious MTV-style party. The thing is, there's nothing in the vault. Bugsy was broke. He pumped all of his money as well as huge sums of money from other investors, into what seemed like a sinking ship. And then he was shot in the head for it at his girlfriend's house, and some of the bullets ended up shattering a Bacchus statue. And then the casino went to make countless dollars. The casino changed ownership before Bugsy's actual murder and underwent renovations. So the main line is, Jack goes back in time, steals the statue before the murder and then plants it in the vault shortly before the renovations start which cover up the vault (and therefore before Bugsy's murder). And this is the handler explaining it to Jack (leaving out a few fine details).

"Time travel's a funny thing, Jack.
You've created a hypothetical reality.
And sure, there's.... Well, countless, Jack, infinite variations of these.
I mean, there's the West. And then there's the Wild West. and the Wild, Wild West. The Spaghetti West. The Paperback West. The Brokeback West. The True Grit West. There's probably a few Vampire Wests floating around. There's Vampire Everythings floating around.
There's men in caps and men in space and men in gnawing gnostic cages.
But that's beside the point. Those hypotheticals are chained to different orbits. Too large, too divergent. Mostly...
The point, is the presence of sentient life at a place where it is not intended to be creates a suggestion that must be tested. Since the divergence is witnessed by sentient life, it must be; at first a pebble caught in our metaphysical orbit, the divergences in timelines minor on a global scale, but as you start to...."
"Biff it up?"
"Hm? Sure, sure. As you start to monkey with the timeliness, the divergences grow and the new time line is big as a baseball then a watermelon then a moon, and suddenly these timelines are tangoing neck to neck the same way a meteor tangos with a planet."
"Sounds apocalyptic."
"No. Reality's good at mending itself. When they merge back together, they'll find a comfortable median of the deviations..."
"Mostly."
"Mostly. Some moments have more gravity than others. The truly mythic ones--"
"Hitler murdered! Dinosaurs saved from extinction! Bruce Lee hired as Kwai Chang Caine!"
"Yes...... They'll find a way to reconcile. But there will be jagged edges. Ghost stories. Things generally not fitting together the way they should, as reality insures that the myth is properly fulfilled. Reality will rebend itself, if required."
"And those little shreds of orbiting hypothetical come plummeting down"
"Like shrapnel from heaven."

Anyway, the idea is that the legend of Bugsy Siegel that cannot be altered is that nine shots ripped through Bugsy's body while he sat in Virginia Hill's home, and four of those bullets shattered the marble Bacchus statue that set atop her piano. But the Bacchus statue wasn't there because of Jack. So, the four bullets that should have shattered the statue have been waiting in limbo, waiting for a witness to step in front of the statue and finish the circuit. So our douchebag reporter opens up the vault and finishes the sequence. Four bullets from nowhere in time, hammering through him and busting their way right through the statue, finishing the circuit, fixing the legend. Ninja time travel assassination, *****es.

Does that make any sense?

Ah! Time travel!

But it does make sense. The plot sounded quite complex when I was reading it but when I thought about it a bit it was easy to understand. The monologue basically explains everything simply and thoroughly. A few of the sentences may be hard to read, especially the longer, technical ones but I don't have any idea how to fix them. Have you tried speaking the lines to see if they actually sound right, flow correctly, don't sound too hard to understand? I don't know. Maybe it's fine.

Also, the random bullets out of nowhere thing is damn cool. And I like all the different Western Universes. I would like to read more of this.
 
Ah! Time travel!

But it does make sense. The plot sounded quite complex when I was reading it but when I thought about it a bit it was easy to understand. The monologue basically explains everything simply and thoroughly. A few of the sentences may be hard to read, especially the longer, technical ones but I don't have any idea how to fix them. Have you tried speaking the lines to see if they actually sound right, flow correctly, don't sound too hard to understand? I don't know. Maybe it's fine.

Also, the random bullets out of nowhere thing is damn cool. And I like all the different Western Universes. I would like to read more of this.

Ha, thanks, yeah. The hints of pseudo-string theory are planting more of a long-ball game, not really consequential to the story, but the ideas just kind of flowed into the time travel mechanic, and it made sense to include them. I'm picturing a mechanism of infinite realities, all of them stuck in an intricate waltz, slipping from one partner to another, the nature of the reality defined in large part by their relationship to other bodies.

I did read it out loud. The cadence makes sense to me. I felt a rhythm that made sense, and I think it's true to the voice of the characters. I was just worried that the theory wouldn't make sense. But if you were able to make sense of it, that's a great start.

Now, the next problem is making a monologue this text heavy fit into a page or two of comic book space.
 
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I'm earmarking this. It doesn't fit into METR anymore, but I could crank it into a short prose story pretty quick and easily I think.
 

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