A Quick Look At My Writing Options

[The Uncreator]

As some of you may have read earlier last month, I recently had a sudden urge to begin something I always wanted to do, write a book. I have actually begun to do so steadily over the past month or so, and have come up with about 30 or more pages. Although all I ask of you know is if you could read the prologue (just one page) and let me know how it reads, and if it sounds any good.


________________________________________________________________________________


________________________________________________________________________________

Prologue: The Last Man

Year - Unknown

The view from the bridge was magnificent, however dark and bleak it might be. He stood with his hands behind his back, lost in contemplation as the cosmos moved slowly around him. The many points of light, no matter how numerous they truly were, still seemed to outline the face of a universe devoid of life, like a vast ocean without its fish. He remained there for several more hours, his gaze unwavering from the dark background of the cosmos, his mind struggling to retain his sanity. Each day it was getting harder and harder for him to continue with this project, he had vivid nightmares every night and they began to invade his already uncertain reality. Even now as he stood alone, the faces of long dead friends and family still faded in and out of his peripheral vision, torturing him with their brief and all too frequent appearances. In the past five months he had developed a nervous twitch in his right hand, and as time crept slowly by it was moving steadily up his arm.
Fully aware that he was losing his mind, he knew there was nothing he could do about it.
He turned around from the observation window and walked to a nearby computer, he sat down and began to type in several different strings of commands. A few milliseconds of processing later, and the results of his search were displayed in the air in front him. The project was about ninety-eight percent complete, give or take ten percent since the ships synthetic intelligence was becoming more and more unreliable, the effects of the past few years bearing down on her as much as it was him. Silver Infinity was once the greatest piece of technology the universe had seen, and now she was a slowly withering corpse, barely able to support herself and her single occupant, like a mother who tried so desperately to keep her child alive, but was ultimately doomed to failure. The idea of this made him genuinely remorseful; Silver Infinity had become his only companion and friend for quite some time, almost a decade now if the clocks were keeping time accurately, and it felt like he was losing her to an incurable disease, unable to help her. Ultimately it didn’t matter though, if everything went according to his plans, they would both be gone from this drab existence in just a few short days, leaving the universe to start from a clean slate as it had done almost fifteen billion years ago.
A few more hours passed before he decided to start the final piece to his project. He began setting up numerous pieces of audio and video equipment, making sure it was all properly synched with Silver Infinity’s computer system, and the rooms mic’s were picking up his voice well enough. The camera he had was setup facing the observation deck, where a single plain chair sat against the window, centered in the frame. He stood over the camera for a moment, unable to move. The ghosts of his past were showing up again, and his hand began to twitch more severely as he developed a feverous sweat. Reluctantly, he pressed the record button on the small camera, and slowly walked to the chair to sit down. As he sat his heart began to race, he let his head hang down in his hands as he tried to resist from pulling his own hair out. He tried to calm himself but he felt his heart was going to burst into pieces, and finally, he thought of his wife. Her gentle face calmed him, the smile he came to love so many years ago always settled these anxiety attacks. He missed her more and more every day, the thought of her both calmed him and struck a pain in his heart, and after a few minutes of reminiscence his sweating and twitch began to subside, and finally he was calm enough to raise his head and look into the camera. He had rehearsed these words a thousand times but never thought the day would come when he would have to speak them honestly. After he took a long breath in, he concentrated on the ancient memories he had of his wife, and finally worked up the strength and nerve to speak,
“My name is Vincent Tereshkova. I am the last man alive, and this is my story.”



________________________________________________________________________________


________________________________________________________________________________



By the way, the name of the "book" is Those Of Intelligent Design. And the name Vincent Tereshkova is derived from the first female in space, Valentina Tereshkova.

Just some ideas I rambled on about, it was kind of odd for me to write since there was not really any dialogue, so I worried it might seem stale or something, but I like the way it came out. Let me know what you guys think


EDIT

Excuse the messed up indentation, its copied from MS Word.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[thefireball]

I think it was very well written. Reminds me of how my friend writes. He explains things in great detail and doesn't use a whole lot of dialogue. Very great job, and it kinda hooked me...imagine being the last one earth. hehe

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[Bluesberry]

Don't have much time now, so I'll just say it was awesome. Stylistically this reminded me of King.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[Saoirse O'Shea]

As an Intro I think it does the job well in that it provides a good hook to get the reader's interest and also starts to flesh out and give a justification for being to the main character .

It's generally well written but - and sorry to be hyper-critical here - with my copy-editor's hat on there are a number of corrections needed. Apologies that these aren't in any particular order but they include: The use of punctuation marks especially the comma, semi-colon and apostrophe; compounded sentences; (over-) use of 'and'; occasional use of 'and' instead of 'but' and vice versa; incorrect concatenation of 'set up' as 'setup'; use of 'synched', which some might not see as an acceptable abbreviation; occasional lapses in logical structure, for example, 'as time crept slowly by it was moving steadily up his arm' implies that time crept up his arm rather than the previous twitch; missing 'time' i, 'A few milliseconds of processing [time] later' (or alternatively 'data processing' - 'processing' by itself in the sense of your sentence is an adjective); incorrect second 'to' in, 'hours passed before he decided to start the final piece to ['to' should be replaced by 'of'] his project'; superfluous 'from', 'he tried to resist from pulling his own hair out'; change in verb tense, 'He began setting up numerous pieces of audio and video equipment, making sure it was all properly synched with Silver Infinity’s computer system, and the rooms mic’s were picking up his voice well enough'; Missing 'had' and 'that' in, 'He had rehearsed these words a thousand times but [had] never thought [that] the day would come'; 'the smile he came to love so many years ago' scans better IMO as ' the smile that he had come to...'; similarly, 'He missed her more and more every day' IMO reads better as, 'He missed her more with each passing day'; superfluous 'in', 'After he took a long breath in'; occasional switching between active and passive sense.

Also it looks like the paragraphing has been lost in the copy/paste from Word as otherwise some of the longer paragraphs need breaking down in to smaller, separate ones. I've probably missed a few others as I've only scanned this quickly on screen.

All of that might look like a lot of issues but to be honest I've been sent 'final' copy with more issues before and there are a lot of published books that contain similar issues.

Anyway, those are all corrections that are relatively easy to deal with. What's more important is that the content and ideas are interesting and IMHO they are. So good job on an enjoyable read .

ps - a bit OT - having tried to use Word before to write long pieces my advice would be don't. In experience it will mess up your formatting when you have a big multi-chapter document over 100 pages in length. I found that it really couldn't retain and use style sheets properly and nor could it cope with setting up a List of Chapters, etc. Its grammar and spelling check are woefully poor. This was on Word 2000 - more recent versions may be better but I doubt it.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[Azzaboi]

Sounds pretty good so far, interested to see where it goes...

If it was me writing:

Start off with car to speed around in around a city in rumble,
grab a rifle,
go hunting animals like deer,
and you need a pet dog,
times up! he hides and locks up in a house at night,
boards up the windows,
sleeps in the bathtub,
and then zombies come out!
(He later finds out he's not the only human survivor)

I would be an awesome story writer!
What's do you mean it's already been done as a movie?

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

This post has been edited by Azzaboi: Sep 10 2010, 06:55 AM

[Vasilije Vukmiro...]

Interesting story!

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

[The Uncreator]

As an Intro I think it does the job well in that it provides a good hook to get the reader's interest and also starts to flesh out and give a justification for being to the main character .

It's generally well written but - and sorry to be hyper-critical here - with my copy-editor's hat on there are a number of corrections needed. Apologies that these aren't in any particular order but they include: The use of punctuation marks especially the comma, semi-colon and apostrophe; compounded sentences; (over-) use of 'and'; occasional use of 'and' instead of 'but' and vice versa; incorrect concatenation of 'set up' as 'setup'; use of 'synched', which some might not see as an acceptable abbreviation; occasional lapses in logical structure, for example, 'as time crept slowly by it was moving steadily up his arm' implies that time crept up his arm rather than the previous twitch; missing 'time' i, 'A few milliseconds of processing [time] later' (or alternatively 'data processing' - 'processing' by itself in the sense of your sentence is an adjective); incorrect second 'to' in, 'hours passed before he decided to start the final piece to ['to' should be replaced by 'of'] his project'; superfluous 'from', 'he tried to resist from pulling his own hair out'; change in verb tense, 'He began setting up numerous pieces of audio and video equipment, making sure it was all properly synched with Silver Infinity’s computer system, and the rooms mic’s were picking up his voice well enough'; Missing 'had' and 'that' in, 'He had rehearsed these words a thousand times but [had] never thought [that] the day would come'; 'the smile he came to love so many years ago' scans better IMO as ' the smile that he had come to...'; similarly, 'He missed her more and more every day' IMO reads better as, 'He missed her more with each passing day'; superfluous 'in', 'After he took a long breath in'; occasional switching between active and passive sense.

Also it looks like the paragraphing has been lost in the copy/paste from Word as otherwise some of the longer paragraphs need breaking down in to smaller, separate ones. I've probably missed a few others as I've only scanned this quickly on screen.

All of that might look like a lot of issues but to be honest I've been sent 'final' copy with more issues before and there are a lot of published books that contain similar issues.

Anyway, those are all corrections that are relatively easy to deal with. What's more important is that the content and ideas are interesting and IMHO they are. So good job on an enjoyable read .

ps - a bit OT - having tried to use Word before to write long pieces my advice would be don't. In experience it will mess up your formatting when you have a big multi-chapter document over 100 pages in length. I found that it really couldn't retain and use style sheets properly and nor could it cope with setting up a List of Chapters, etc. Its grammar and spelling check are woefully poor. This was on Word 2000 - more recent versions may be better but I doubt it.

No need to be sorry, these kinds of things I read right over without knowing just because in my head I know what I am trying to say. This is the kind of feedback I want, so thank you for this great input!

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

Don't miss today's free lick. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!

Don't miss today's free blues, jazz & country licks. Plus all our lessons are packed with free content!