Exercise 36: June 2010 -or- Where It Happened

[Creole Ned]

Exercise 36: June 2010 -or- Where It Happened

Submit anything you like -- a short story, an article, a novel excerpt and so on, or you may try your hand at a more directed exercise by going with Plan B below:

Use the Serendipitous Setting Descriptions (http://writingfix.com/right_brain/Serendipitous_Setting1.htm) to generate a setting for a story, then write the story.

[Jon_Danger]

http://www.biologydude.com/2010/06/14/why-is-the-lake-green/

Article for my new website.

[Creole Ned]

russell's entry, Meetings (http://creolened.com/fiction/exercises/meetings.pdf).

I will have feedback for both entries in the next few days and may get mine in under the wire.

[Creole Ned]

Haha, "next few days" indeed! :P

Sorry, guys, I really will get feedback to you by the end of the week.

[russellmz]

http://www.biologydude.com/2010/06/14/why-is-the-lake-green/

Article for my new website.

nice, informative article. i knew most of it but not about the cyanbacteria.

is it possible to make lake water safe to drink? i would guess no if the algae spits out poison.

[Creole Ned]

I suck, but here's the first of my feedback!

Why is the Lake Green - Jon_Danger:

This is a clearly written article and the informal tone suits the biology dude theme well. Structurally I like the way the article lays out the basics then offers separate headings to deal with specific subtopics brought up.

My only real complaints are of the editor variety. Imagine me using a red marker on your screen for maximum effect:

- all of the terms that have quotation marks around them do not need them. See this site (http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/) for more. :) I would italicize the terms as they are introduced instead. The one exception is "seaweed" since you are describing something that is not actually seaweed. The quotes are fine there.
- I would cut the use of "well" and "so" to start sentences. While it lends an informal tone it's also bad grammar and I think you can maintain the informal tone without using these words.
- you end* with a double exclamation point. Never do this, ever. EVER!
- I don't like the use of two spaces to start a sentence and it's generally considered out of fashion these days (it was originally used with typewriters because it helped make sentences visually stand apart better since many typewriters used characters of the the same width, something that is not an issue today unless you insist on using Courier as your font).

There are a few other minor things that another edit would clean up but I'm not going to nitpick the article to bits. :) As I said, this is an entertainingly written piece that presents its information in clear, digestible chunks. You should definitely keep writing more of these articles.


* technically it's the second to last sentence

[Creole Ned]

Meetings - russell:

This scene (or two) is an interesting look at how the clones react to their own duplicates and I enjoyed the differences and conflict between 47 and Margaret that came to light in their talk. I also liked the idea of how a clone cares about her 'parents' even while she knows the memories are simply implanted as part of the cloning process.

"You should talk with Mapu. He says he knows how to get the dead trees in the bureaucracy to walk." is a nice turn of phrase.

There are a couple of times where I had to do another quick scan to see who was talking. I suppose in a story with clones conversing amongst themselves a little confusion may not be uncommon. :)

I would try to avoid telling emotion rather than showing it.

Showing: "47 blew out her breath. Calm down. Talk about something else."

Telling: "She hadn't planned on getting pissed and she wasn't yelling, but Margaret was majorly pissing her off."

Other than that, a neat little slice of life in the ever-growing clone story!