The SSSS Scriptorium

[Noodles]

Haiz
Haiz, that was beautiful. Lallininja, FTW! And also cookies and Tuuri-squees and everything else and aaaaa

[LurkBeast]

There seems to be a lot of great things happening in the Scriptorium, and I'm hoping to catch up with all of it at some point! For the time being I've read the first chapter of Solovei's Hotakainen backstory and everything by SectoBoss, and it's all great! I don't think you need to hear any additional squee'ing about the pacific rim au, just know that there is a lot of it.

ANYWAY, I kind of promised in the art thread to write some more of that high school au, involving cookies. So I did. It's short, ridiculous and as OOC as ever, I hope you enjoy it!

~*Standstill High part 5: The Cookiepocalypse*~
(only english version for the time being, might translate if I get the opportunity later on)

Broke a mirror off the cattank in full view of two of my team mates?
BETTER LOB IT AS FAR AS I CAN.
Attacked by a troll and I have a gun, a shortsword, and a bandolier of grenades?
BETTER THROW MY LAMP AT IT.
Lalli's trying to steal dough from an easily carriable bowl?
BETTER FEND HIM OFF WITH A MOP.

Yeah, I think you have Emil's thought process down Haiz.

[Haiz]

oh gosh oh gosh so many incredibly nice comments
I'm gonna lie on the floor and melt into a puddle for a bit
yeah

Edit : will we see an Ikea excursion ?

hMMmM it's on the list of possible scenarios, if I ever come up with a plot for that (or if I visit IKEA anytime soon... fun fact: i applied for a summer job on IKEA. i didn't get it of course but still), it may happen >:]

Broke a mirror off the cattank in full view of two of my team mates?
BETTER LOB IT AS FAR AS I CAN.
Attacked by a troll and I have a gun, a shortsword, and a bandolier of grenades?
BETTER THROW MY LAMP AT IT.
Lalli's trying to steal dough from an easily carriable bowl?
BETTER FEND HIM OFF WITH A MOP.

Yeah, I think you have Emil's thought process down Haiz.

hahaha YEAH PRETTY MUCH

[Tjoll]

ANYWAY, I kind of promised in the art thread to write some more of that high school au, involving cookies. So I did. It's short, ridiculous and as OOC as ever, I hope you enjoy it!
~*Standstill High part 5: The Cookiepocalypse*~

HAIZ YOU ARE A NATIONAL TREASURE I cannot thank you enough for writing this IT'S PERFECT YOU ARE PERFECT
I grinned like an idiot reading it

[daiseerose]

ok um, so here is my fanfic, and um, criticism is welcome, so yea.

lost
chapter one
rated T
for: turkeyrunes
I own nothing, all characters belong to the creator of stand still stay silent
 
No one saw the troll coming. It came out of no where, but it came all the same. lalli ducked out of the way before the heads came, but Emil wasn’t so lucky. with a horrible clank, his
head hit the ground hard, already bleeding heavily. lalli had no idea where the crazy lady was, and didn’t know if she was alive or not. lalli backed away, from the troll, trying to see if he was even alive. he bent down, blood already on his clothes, and tried to look at the wound, but lalli kept looking back at the troll, to see if it would attack again.Then, suddenly, lalli heard shots ring out, echoing all around, he figured it was the crazy lady, and he was right. She was right there, shooting at the troll and yelling something, while also making some crazy hand gestures that lalli assumed meant run, so he carefully, with difficulty, and carried Emil away, while secretly hoping that the lady doesn’t die. Emil was pretty heavy,and his bloodied hair kept on getting in his way, sticking to his face and clothes. Lalli struggled to carry Emil, who seemed to be getting heavier by the minute. Lalli wasn’t sure how long he was walking, but when the forest became gloomy and dim, he finally set the swede down carefully on the ground, while making a makeshift bed in the more shaded part, by piling leaves up, and setting the swede on top. lalli had no idea what to do. he has never been in a situation like this, and he has no idea how to stop the bleeding.
‘ what if he dies?’
lalli shook the thought away, and flopped on the ground, exhausted.How could anyone stop that much blood from coming out? it wasn’t like lalli had much here to help him, the best bet would be leaves.
the leaves were the best that lalli could come up with, so he pressed the leaves to the wound on his head, and checked if anything else was broken or bleeding. after checking him, lalli found only one other wound, and that was on his leg. Lalli didn’t think it was broken, just bleeding.
when the leg wound was taken care of, he sat down again, listening to the forest, and making sure no trolls came again. he made that mistake once, he wasn’t doing it again. suddenly he heard a groan, lalli looked up to see emil was waking up slowly. " what happened?" emil asked, his voice rough. he tried to get up, but lalli pushed him back down " you got hurt, and there was a troll" lalli said., even if he knew that the swede couldn't understand him.When Emil tried to get up again, lalli decided to just sit on him, to keep him from getting up "hey!" the swede was saying something, but lalli just ignored him, not interested enough to see what he was saying, and just laid down. "....." - Emil had a pretty rough day. first, getting hit by that troll, two, waking up in searing pain, three, bieng lost in the woods, with no food water, medical supplies, and bieng with someone who didn't even understand him.who, was also sitting on top of him. Emil sighed. 'well things could be worse, it could be storming right now' emil thought,as lalli fell asleep. emil stared at the sky, his headache preventing him from sleep. he had no idea how lalli was sleeping, 'but he didn't exactly get hit,' Emil thought back to himself 'yea but-' suddenly he heard it, a rumble. a troll.
 "lalli!' emil hissed, before a searing pain went through his head, and everything went black

[KicknRun]

ok um, so here is my fanfic, and um, criticism is welcome, so yea.

lost
chapter one
rated T
for: turkeyrunes
I own nothing, all characters belong to the creator of stand still stay silent
 

well, um, The formatting is making it kinda hard to read, so you should fix that, names are proper nouns and get capitalized each and every time. Nowhere is a compound word, bloodied would probably read better as bloody. I'm not quite sure what P.O.V this is being read in since

what happened?" emil asked, his voice rough.

Even though/Unless the POV is full on omniscient, lalli would have to guess at what emil was saying., which doesn't quite  have been said.

Also, if a vein or artery was hit, Emil's dead, buddy.

I like the idea, though. (i'm being really really harsh here oh my god i only really started writing seriously 3 months ago)

[Noodles]

ok um, so here is my fanfic, and um, criticism is welcome, so yea.

This is wonderful!
It's also made of feels but that's OK.
Please make more!

[KicknRun]

I wrote a 1000+ words today! Crap.

Spoiler: WARNINGS FOR THE STORY • show

death

SPOILER TAGS ARE NOT WORKING-WILL TRY AGAIN LATER-TOO LATE AT NIGHT FOR ME TO DO ANYTHING

Something That Will Follow Us


Sigrun checked her watch. It had been about fifteen minutes since Emil had gone off to check for danger. He was either killing something idiotically, lost, or idiotically dead. Hopefully, Emil was lost.  If he had spectacularly bad luck, he was dead. Sigrun put the watch back, and set out for Emil.(or his body)

¤

Emil’s hand is on the trigger of his gun. Beginner's mistake.

¤

Emil had pretty good ears, Sigrun considered. He could have made a pretty good Hunter, back in Norway. Too bad he was dripping ‘round the ears and, ya know, not from Norway.

Sigrun’s ears perk up. Pitter pat. Pitter patter. Its not from the rain either-which has stopped-it’s feet. Which is good, because she did not want to deal with a deal body. Sigrun curves around to duck her head into one corridor. The sound is louder here, and now more of a shuffle than a patter. One of the doors are open. All the other doors are closed.

Sigrun goes through the open door. Shuffle. Emil is there, back turned away from her. A smile comes to her face. At least he isn’t dead.

“Gre-”

BANG.

¤

There is a dead body on the floor, and she is smiling. Sigrun is smiling. Sigrun is dead.  Sigrun is smiling and dead. Emil killed Sigrun.

The gun drops. Emil runs. Emil falls, on crazy lady, on the woman who saved his life ,on Sigrun Eide from Dalsnes, with a family that is still alive, skilled enough to survive too many brutal hunting seasons but not one stupid trainee and Emil hears a crack and he isn’t quite sure who it belongs to but he flails around some more and (deadeadMURDERER) and gets up and runs.  Calling it flying would be far too elegant, and calling it fleeing would be far too cruel, but it is accurate. Emil flees.

¤

Somehow, Emil gets back, away from the school (the place where her body lies, probably with some troll or beast is already consuming it. emil knows he’d consider it a fate worse than death) and over the truck (didn’t she help you up that?), and to the tank, where he almost but doesn’t quite crash into the door. He slides down it instead, crumpling.The door opens. Mikkel comes out. “Where is Sigrun?, he asks.

Emil doesn’t honestly know the answer.

(Emil does not cry himself to sleep. He simply cries.)



A/N; huwooo, everything i wrote today was sad. I'm never writing death again by the way. also, to the people who follow me on tumblr, yup, this was the worrying sentence.  EDIT: This was written before the monday page happened, and it was typed afterwards.

BONUS:where is the title from-hint the comic

[Róisín]

Daiseerose: the way to learn to write is to keep on writing. So please keep writing! This looks like a scene out of the middle of a story? I'm curious to know what comes before and after this vignette.

[Róisín]

KicknRun: oooh! Dark! Sigrun is likely annoyed enough to haunt Emil for the rest of his probably brief days! Your Sigrun is getting more canon-Sigrun-like. Well-made despite the death. I'm glad you don't plan to do that again though; I much prefer to see Sigrun alive and snarling/smiling.

[LooNEY_DAC]

Daiseerose:
Aside from what Roisin said, your problems seem mostly technical, as mentioned by KicknRun: paragraphing, punctuation, and capitalization errors detract from a very solid story opening. My advice: slow down; go over what you've written; and perhaps have someone else proofread. Again, as an opening chapter, it seems sound story-wise.

[Solovei]

Daiseerose:
Aside from what Roisin said, your problems seem mostly technical, as mentioned by KicknRun: paragraphing, punctuation, and capitalization errors detract from a very solid story opening. My advice: slow down; go over what you've written; and perhaps have someone else proofread. Again, as an opening chapter, it seems sound story-wise.

I cannot stress enough the importance of having proofreaders or beta-readers. A second set of eyes is essential.

[Róisín]

LooneyDac Solovei and Daiseerose: That's good advice. I would add something I have found to be a very useful writing technique. Admittedly most of what I write in real life is technical articles, with the occasional poem or song, but I believe the same principle applies to writing fiction. Which I'm just getting back into. I had a few stories published back in the 1960s, mostly SF, have helped out with a few TV scripts and plays, but haven't written much fiction since, because life.

So. Write something, whether the whole story, a single scene, or a few paragraphs. Then put it away. Look at it again in a few days. Make corrections as needed. There will always be errors of spelling, grammar, word order or fact. Fix them. Add any brilliant inspirations that have come to you. Delete anything that on re-reading you realise is nonsense or just superfluous to what you are saying. Repeat the process in a few more days.

ALWAYS SAVE BOTH THE ORIGINAL AND ALL THE REVISIONS. Yes, it does sometimes happen that your first version was the best after all. When you are as happy with the story as you think you are going to get, then post it. Be prepared for the moment when you proudly read it on the page and go aarrgh! How did I miss that mistake?

See if you can buy or find online a little book by Ursula K LeGuin called 'From Elfland to Poughkeepsie'. It is a precious book about how to write good fantasy/SF. And how to write well in general. The other good advice, from poet/playwright Douglas Stewart, is: write something every day. Set aside time for writing and stick to it, even if it's only half an hour. Even if all you do is stare at the line you wrote yesterday and delete it. Stewart wrote masterpieces while working at a soul-destroying boring public service job. He would come home from work every day and set aside an hour to work on his writing. Eventually he became famous enough to be a full-time writer. And very, very good. If you want to read 'tragic, scary and really bleak' done relentlessly well, I recommend his verse-play 'The Fire on the Snow', a retelling of Scott's Antarctic expedition from the viewpoint of the men dying as they try to make it back to their base, and die just a few miles short of it.

So yeah. Write regularly, revise thoroughly, save frequently. Reread before posting. And do watch the spelling, punctuation and grammar. Readers tend to be put off by their absence. We can't all be Jack Kerouac; the stream-of-consciousness don't-look-back-over-what-you've-written thing almost never works, even in the white heat of inspiration!

[Solovei]

While we're recommending books about writing, I picked up one called "How not to write a novel" a few months back and it was great. Lots of (obviously fake) examples of bad writing but it's also really funny, especially in its commentary on WHY you shouldn't do those things. Even if novels aren't your thing, the same principles can be applied to any story length, really.

[Sunflower]

See if you can buy or find online a little book by Ursula K LeGuin called 'From Elfland to Poughkeepsie'. It is a precious book about how to write good fantasy/SF. And how to write well in general.

I was going to jump in and say that "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" is an essay in UKL's wonderful collection "The Language of the Night," which is easily findable in paperback.  (Assuming you don't already have it on the shelf literally 3 feet away, as I do.)

And then it turns out "The Language of the Night" is out of print, and my mass-market Berkley Books paperback edition with the Contemptible Cover and the cheap pulp paper already starting to go brown is worth -- used -- about 10 times what I paid for it 25 years ago.   

So although I feel kind of bad about exploiting Google Books, here is "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" online.

LeGuin has wonderful advice on writing, not just in this essay but many of her works. 

1. http://www.amazon.com/Steering-Craft-Exercises-Discussions-Navigator/dp/0933377460/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0JJ2ABBAGDY6FA6HJ2TG

2. Dancing at the Edge of the World