Lightningmouse

@perfectfifths

Um…Well, I can honestly say that I don’t know too much about writing short stories, especially not 1,500 word short ones. Yeah, that definitely is crazy. Probably why there is a reward in the first place. 😛 I had to write a short story once that was only 1000 words, and I managed to keep it down to 900. I really just wrote down whatever came…[Read more]

@northerner @ethryndal I think I’m going to be done now. I wrote 167 words. /Not the best, but better than nothing, I suppose. Thanks!

@ethryndal Writing parts of yourself into your characters is one of the best ways to do that! I really like that alternate method though of using one of your friends as a means of portraying the character. Hadn’t thought of that before, but I may have to try that now!

@ethryndal Nice work! I particularly like 3 and 5 since they’re wrong answers that can seem rather sympathetic at first. Sounds like a great backbone for poetic justice there as well.

@hope Ahh; got ya. Sounds like you may have two different themes going on here. Success would work well as a theme. Another way you could take it if you wanted to stick with the finite ability of man, would be to have a focusing question like this: “Given the finite ability of man, how can man succeed in life?” The answers would then just need to…[Read more]

@northerner Great!

Anyone and everyone else, I’m still going.

@winter-rose Ah, editing.
I finished copying a rough draft of a scene list. Thanks!

@winter-rose I’ll join you!
@daeus @kate-flournoy @jess @aella @ethryndal @anyone else
Are any of you writing tonight as well?

@hope Good choice! There definitely are a number of themes in LotR (the lust for power is another central one), and that theme is certainly one of them.

@hope Those are great possible answers to the focusing question; I really like how many of those answers are pretty sympathetic answers that many people would choose, and not just obviously wrong answers like fame or power. That has the potential to make your theme a lot more compelling as readers can see themselves drifting to those wrong…[Read more]

@hope Great analogy! I like it. And I definitely agree with you on how great it is to find books with great themes. Nothing hooks me to a story as much as a strong theme does.

@hope That’s great. Haha, I can definitely sympathize with the struggle of moving a theme from the concept-level into the actual story! Keep that goal in mind while working through the course and I’d love to hear your thoughts on the other end of the course on how much the course helped you with that goal.

@anne-swiftblade That’s great! We’ll be…[Read more]

@kate-flournoy Plays are great! And that sounds like a great example of catharsis. I haven’t read those plays before, but I’ll need to put those on my reading list now…

I pretty much agree with everyone else. I’m hoping to be able to both detect theme in works of literature and incorporate theme skilfully into my own writing.

@jess yes, finally! Another perfectionist! *high fives you*

@gabriellemassman Ha! Procrastinator’s block, I don’t think that writer’s are the only one experiencing that. 😛

Ah, and strange vocabulary connection I just made for school.
The word Supercilious pretty much means arrogant. The root for it is Supercilium which means ‘eyebrow’. I guess even back when this root was made, arrogant people still raised their eyebrows. 😛

@sierra-r I can’t…when and who was it from?

Terpischorean… I’m going to have to use that some day. 😀

Here are some more.

Legerdemain: trickery

Imbroglio: a complicated situation (or, for less formal matters, brouhaha 😛 I love that word)

Pastiche: a work that imitates or is made of pieces of other works

And I found this one very…[Read more]