The Marketplace of Technique: Open to All

QSON: As a matter of fact, I have long done a low-tech, or Flintstone-tech, version of what you describe: filling audiocassettes with selections of my favorites. Among them--

Have you ever heard of Peter Schickele? He is best known for his "PDQ Bach" concerts," which are a bizarre combination of stand-up comedy and classical music. But he also composed a serious soundtrack, for the sci-fi movie "Silent Running" (before your time; starred Bruce Dern, and had R2D2-like robots). The music from that is emotionally stirring.
 
Copperfox said:
QSON: As a matter of fact, I have long done a low-tech, or Flintstone-tech, version of what you describe: filling audiocassettes with selections of my favorites. Among them--

Have you ever heard of Peter Schickele? He is best known for his "PDQ Bach" concerts," which are a bizarre combination of stand-up comedy and classical music. But he also composed a serious soundtrack, for the sci-fi movie "Silent Running" (before your time; starred Bruce Dern, and had R2D2-like robots). The music from that is emotionally stirring.
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Hmmm, I have not heard of him. I will have to check out his music, though!! :) Have you head of Yann Tiersen? He is AMAZING! He scored the french movie "Amelie", which was (apparently) not very good, but the soundtrack is INSANE.
 
No, never heard of Yan Tiersen, but perhaps one day I'll run across music of his?

In turn, here is a recommendation going outside the orchestral realm. If you ever see any recording by either or both of two brothers named Tony and Peter Elman, give it a listen. They are instrumentalists, Tony playing hammered dulcimer and Peter playing piano. They do some traditional tunes, and compose original music also. I especially love Peter Elman's all-original album "Durango Saloon," on which Tony also played some.

I can still vaguely justify linking this to writing technique, because various favorite songs become associated in my mind with particular characters I have made up. For instance, Tony Elman's rendition of a folk tune called "Beaucatcher's Farewell" became for me a portrait of a female character in a story of mine who had been through much tragedy, but had come through it with her inner sweetness surviving.
 
Copperfox said:
Have you ever heard of Peter Schickele? He is best known for his "PDQ Bach" concerts," which are a bizarre combination of stand-up comedy and classical music. But he also composed a serious soundtrack, for the sci-fi movie "Silent Running" (before your time; starred Bruce Dern, and had R2D2-like robots). The music from that is emotionally stirring.
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Peter Schickele is hilarious!!!!! I have a few PDQ Bach CDs, and they are amazing! I knew he composed serious music, too, but I haven't heard of that particular movie.
 
Copperfox said:
I can still vaguely justify linking this to technique, because various favorite songs become associated in my mind with particular characters I have made up. For instance, Tony Elman's rendition of a folk tune called "Beaucatcher's Farewell" became for me a portrait of a female character in a story of mine who had been through much tragedy, but had come through it with her inner sweetness surviving.
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That's so funny! Back in the day I once did an entire presentation on Their Eyes Were Watching God where I used popular music to give my plot summary!
 
How did you do that? Do you simply mean that you had a chosen piece of music playing when you discussed a certain part of the story?
 
Copperfox said:
How did you do that? Do you simply mean that you had a chosen piece of music playing when you discussed a certain part of the story?
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My group and I acted out the high points of the story to music that was specifically chosen to tell the story. For instance, when a character got married to escape his poverty, we might have acted that out, without words, to the song "If I Were a Rich Man..." playing in the background.
 
Moving on, to story-logic

Years ago, I read a sci-fi novel titled "The Cyborg and the Sorcerors," by Lawrence Watt-Evans. It proved that you can get away with a science-fiction story premise that makes no sense; but I'd rather that writers here _didn't_ ignore logic (other than when purposely writing silliness for fun, but Mr. Watt-Evans was writing straight-faced).

The problem is not that the author had a main character with "bionic" abilities encounter people with paranormal powers on a colonized extrasolar world; the problem is in the future-history context he imagined.

This plot assumed that interstellar travel was possible--but at such limited speed relative to the distances, that only the proposed Einsteinian distortion of time plus hibernation enroute prevented the interstellar astronaut from dying of old age before the trip was even halfway done. This meant that, as everyone else experienced time, a starship typically took decades to make a one-way transit between our Solar System and any of the colonized ones. But in this scenario, Mr. Watt-Evans told us that Earth was depending on those extrasolar colonies....TO PROVIDE THE BASIC NECESSITIES OF LIFE!

Think about this, although Mr. Watt-Evans clearly didn't want his readers to think about it. Imagine a mother with hungry children, saying, "Don't worry, kids, the next food shipment will be here in just 37 years!"

The fact that one is writing imaginative fiction is no excuse for plot setups that make no sense. The Chronicles of Narnia take lots of supernatural liberties, but even there Mr. Lewis didn't say that water ISN'T made of hydrogen and oxygen, or that two plus two equals five.
 
yes, i think i agree. books just seem more enjoyable when they seem possible. some books though, are just made to make no sense.
 
Shifting gears to poetry again:

Here is a poem I just came up with, partly for fun, and partly to demonstrate where meter overlaps rhyme scheme. This poem contains both "masculine" rhymes, meaning one-syllable rhyme endings, and "feminine" rhymes, meaning two-syllable rhyme endings. In a given meter, separating masculine from feminine rhyme affects your ability to keep the number of syllables consistent to that meter.


"IN PRAISE OF THE TURQUAISE--OR IS IT, IN PROISE OF THE TURQUOISE?"

The mountains of the Southwest
Have red and orange crowns,
With yellows, and the brownest
Of dirty, dreary browns.

Cool colors in that setting
Will stand out like loud noise;
And that's the cause, I'm betting,
Why God made the turquoise.

Hot-colored hills are scratchy
To the beholding eye;
That's why the brave Apache
Spoke of good days to die.

They could have been still glummer,
Without more happy poise,
Had not God, one fine summer,
Created the turquoise.

That blue, half sky, half water,
Must have been found in sand
By some exploring daughter
Of some Apache man.

It was a sight for sore eyes,
Worn by both girls and boys;
May God bless even more eyes
With sight of the turquoise.
 
ABSTRUCE RHYME SCHEMES

Some of us write AA, BB, CC

I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree

Some of us write XA, XA, XB, XB

I think you will agree good sir
That winter's winds a chillin
In absence of an overcoat
Are through my hide a drillin

Some of us get even more adventurous and do XAB, XAB

Love is a song that never ends
Life may be swift and fleeting
Hope may die yet love's beautiful music comes each day like the dawn

Love is a song that never ends
One simple theme repeating
Like the voice of a heavenly choir love's sweet music goes on

But have you ever thought that for greater intelligence, such as we may have someday after our Earthly race is over, or for exalted beings now such as angels and archangels, there may be more spread out and complex rhyme schemes? Anyone care to write one and explain what they did?

Here's an ABCD, ABCD

To be your friend I have no doubt
Would evermore improve my life
And give me cause to thank my God
For bringing us together here

You turned my lonely world about
A source of strength midst earthly strife
A shield to turn away the rod
A gentle word to banish fear

Alright so I threw that together on the spot and it sounds like it. I needed an illustration. Anyone want to try something even more daunting?

ABABCDEFABG, ABABCDEFABG, HIHIJKLMHIN, HIHIJKLMHIN ??

I know, that's mean, evil and nasty. So be it. But if you can, there is probably some superhuman intelligence out there that will say, "You're the human I've waited for all my life..." :D
 
We interrupt this program for a Valentine's Day gesture

I have just written a set of haikus for my wife:


Adult concerns, yet
Childlike pleasure in worship:
This is Janalee.

Seen at odd moments,
In the midst of dull routines,
Her beauty leaps out.

Like an Amazon,
Slaying monsters, she defeats
Depression, sometimes.

New glasses don't make
Her eyes lovelier; her eyes
Improve the glasses.

By necessity
She crosses the streams of pain
On stepping-stone pills.

As long as she still
Is able to stir a hand,
My hand will hold hers.

Joseph
 
fernshirehobbit said:
wow, i think i will pass, badger
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I second that. I tried to follow but I am slow after all. Maybe I'll take the time out to study that one post.
I haven't read this thread from the begining but I'm sure each page has something to offer.
One thing I'd like to say is this: You know when things get popular because of one person, let's use the obvious, vampires introduced in stephenie meyer's Twilight saga. Since this series vampires have beocme popular and other authors have started to write their own vampire stories. Darren Shan I understand, I mean vampires inthat story are presented with logic and such and it's different. the whole sotry is. But my librarian got a book with me in mind Called "Blue Bloods" by Melissa De la Cruz. I enjoyed that book, yes until one part, but now that I am done the book I look at it and go "Where were the vampires?! it was only a bunch of beautiful rich immortals!"
the cullens are rich and beautiful but at isnt what makes them vampires. She STOLE Stephenie's idea about glowing vampires. she just threw it in randomly. That was her thing and she just stole it. I kind of was itching to post this somewhere and the first post of this thread gave me opportunity, Don’t do that. There is so much more i can say but I won’t, not here, not now. Only the readers can call out about this and say something, not the author but here’s another thing.
I was in chapters and i picked up a book and i read the back and it said something along the lines of (it was a piece from the actual novel) “Who was the kid with the harry potter glasses?”
If I were j.K. rowling, im sorry but I’d sue that person. And even about the previously mentioned situation, if i could i would do something about it. You shouldn’t take someone’s fantasy/fictional work that they’ve created and made seem so real and just throw it in your book to completely kill the magic. I mean it's ok if you mention classics in your fantasy or sci fi novels but dont throw in other peoples creations to just ruin it like that.
 
Vampire stories were already popular long before the Twilight saga was even thought of. Something like 40 years ago, ABC Television produced a serial called "Dark Shadows," featuring numerous horror characters. Prominent in the show was a sympathetic vampire named Barnabas Collins.
 
Also-rans and rip-offs are the plague of any great work or movement.

Look at The Wizard of Oz. Nobody could have been Dorothy like Judy Garland, especially the way she dead-centred the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Yet MGM originally tried to borrow Shirley Temple from Paramount which refused. And wow, they missed out on a plum role and (thankfully) we got "stuck" with Judy Garland....

To make a long story short, Paramount tried to cash in on the Wizard of Oz by making their own "also ran", titled "The Bluebird". It was a very forgettable movie, and it was a shameless attempt to ride the wave.

There was a period of time after the movie "Pretty Woman" when every movie made had to be named after a popular song and the song had to appear in it for some pretext or another. Such as "Only the Lonely".

This happens with books as well as movies, and yes it is hair-pulling to endure it. Friends don't let friends make rip-off hack works.
 
Wow. This thread is really helpful! and it's for FREE! :O
lot's of good points here.
OH MY GOD I READ THAT BOOK and I know what you mean. It's just full of rich, pretty, "vampires" (yeah right.) having sex. K, they DO.
 
haha, yes, completely free. um... ive only read the first book and it's an adventure book. reminds me of His Dark Materials and makes me want to finish those :eek:
and the thing aout how the vampire looks different when they suck blood out of the vampire, tha reminds me of..Daren Shan. a lot of other things too. and to top it all, that song, time is running out by the muse, stephenie likes it and she used lyrics as quotes and this woma throws it in her book too. :|
I like Schuleyer, the character, though. yeah and also in that book this guys like oh my friend came up with dracula as a joke"
this is getting off topic so ima bounce.
 
oh...ok...
There's a book, monster and Crank, and I want to read them just to see the way it's written, it's kind of weird. like a poem type of thing.
omg i have to say one more thing. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE is..wow. their new single is on thir myspace and i cried when i listened to it i was in the car with my mom and it was on and shes like, it sounds like death cab and she was switching it and im like "MOOOM! SWITH IT BACK!" who switches death cab songs :| . cant wait for the album. and see you like Dashboard as well. Good taste in music. Them two, specaly death cab, most amazing lyrics ever.
 
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