The Pecman

I agree in general with what Cole says above. One thing that I think an editor can contribute best is simply another point of view. Often, I think writers miss "the big picture," and they don't necessarily understand, for example what is the point of this chapter. Very often, I'll read an online novel, and an entire chapter will go by and I'll say, "wait a minute -- nothing really happened there." To me, every chapter has to advance the story and characters forward, like a chess game. If the chapter doesn't really have a point, I'll say that even before I get down to suggesting changes and additions. And the second thing is confusion, as in "why did this character do that?" "Why did this happen?" I think questions like that are important in terms of story and character, so an editor can prod the writer to better-explain something. I always say, "if I didn't understand this, than somebody else may not understand it, either." The third thing is alternate ideas. A phone conversation might be better condensed as description instead of dialog, just to make the story go faster. Or a minor character gets killed off-screen; maybe having them die as an active part of the story would be more interesting -- or vice-versa. Having someone to ask about a different direction can sometimes be a good thing. Usually, when it happens to me, I either say, "nope -- I can't do that because of X, Y, and Z," or I say, "hey -- what if instead of doing that, we did such-and-such." So if the editor/advisor inspires you to a third different idea (neither the original idea or the suggestion), then the story is still made better. So that's three examples of what an editor can do beyond just grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

I'm sympathetic. I think the sad reality is that (as said above) the stories with the most erotic content are going to get more feedback than the thoughtful, character-driven stories without as much sex (or none at all). The bottom line is that you have to write for yourself first, and not expect any feedback at all. That having been said: I always, always, will send a quick email to a Net author whose work I enjoyed. Even if it's just "hey, I just caught your story and thought it was terrific," I figure that's something to help them keep writing. Don't get discouraged. Remember that the journey is its own reward, and sometimes that's the only solace you can get.

I actually worked on Magnum for the last season and a half, and even got to meet Tom Selleck (only because he directed the last two episodes). Very nice man -- and not gay.

Can it do surround sound?

You can't, not unless you're using multiple 1st person POV, which is very messy. There are certainly other ways the narrator can observe another character, and reveal the other character's thoughts that way. But it'd be very difficult, if, say, the other person was deliberately withholding information or lying (at least, if they were doing it convincingly). The Sherlock Holmes stories are excellent examples where 1st person (told by Dr. Watson) reveals other people's thoughts by means of Holmes' incredible powers of observation. The detective was practically a human lie detector, but he was also a one-in-a-million kind of character. Again, I think neither 1st or 3rd POV is better than the other. Each is just a useful tool in the writers' arsenal.

Not a good generalization. Moby Dick is told in first person. So is David Copperfield. There are undoubtedly hundreds of other long stories told entirely from one person's viewpoint. 1st person POV's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: the reader can only know what the lead character knows, and can only see what the lead character sees. The first time I wrote in 3rd person, I immediately caught on: ah, we can get inside anybody's head at any moment. But it's easy to overuse that, as well. 1st person also forces the reader to identify solely with the narrator. Godo or bad, you have to sympathize with him (or her), so it's important to have them ask the same questions the reader would, and react in a way that's understandable (if not predictable). The "fish out of water" situation is the best reason I can think of to stick with 1st person. That way, if the lead character is surrounded by aliens, or finds himself in a strange land, you learn about this place and these people through the eyes of a familiar person. It would be a tougher challenge to write a story like this, jumping back and forth from (say) an alien's mind to a human mind. But that could be done, too. I think it's simply another creative choice available to the writer, no better or worse than many others.

That begs the question: if we could choose to be straight or gay, which would we choose? The problem with that question, for me, is that being gay is so ingrained with who I am, I can't imagine not being gay. Anytime I've ever fantasized about being different -- taller, better looking, born in a different century, etc. -- being gay wasn't something I would change. I know that being straight is far more accepted, and is (relatively speaking) an easier life overall for most people. But I'm not sure I would have chosen a different path, even if I could have. As far as I'm concerned, it's like skin color: we're born with it, and we gotta live with it.

I don't agree with the first statement about 1st person POV, but I do -- to a degree -- agree with the last, about it being somewhat easer for beginning writers. Some of the greatest books in literature have been written entirely in first person, by authors such as Arthur Conan-Doyle, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, and many others. I think 1st person is required for certain kinds of stories -- for example, mysteries, where the reader learns about each clue through the eyes of the detective (or his assistant) investigating the situation. I also think that 1st person POV works for autobiographical or "fish out of water" stories. But generally speaking, I think 3rd person is far more flexible, since you can get inside the head of anyone you want, and show things not known by your lead character. On the other hand, I'm strongly opposed to shifting points of view in a 1st person story, moving from one person to another. We had a long message thread on this over a year ago, at this link. For more on points of view in fiction, read Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card* (Writers Digest Press, ISBN #0898793076). Card makes the strong case that anything you can do in 1st you can do in 3rd person omniscient, but says the same thing I do: that you have to go with what's appropriate for each story. ______________ * by the way, note that I'm not of fan of Card's views on gay lifestyles. I don't like him as a person, but I admire his writing.

The sound you hear is my head thumping against the monitor. God, I hate reading crap like this woman's speech. Somebody, please hit her in the face with a lemon creme pie.

Yeah, there's some Word and Excel macros that are cross-platforum. Go up to the Word Security settings menu, go to "Macro Security" and turn on "Warn before opening a file that contains macros." Ditto with Excel. If you want to be really paranoid, you can also disable all Java scripts with web browsers, because those are a potential source of trouble, too, but that breaks a lot of websites. As to Pages, choosing a word processing program for a writer is a religious issue. I tried Pages, but it was too damned weird for me. I opted back for Word, simply because it's familiar and it's "the devil I know." But I did take Word 2008 and change a lot of menus back to more closely-resemble the traditional Word's look. Tradition, you know.

At the moment, there's only been one or two major Mac OSX viruses, and Apple actually patched the holes before anything major happened. Keep in mind that OSX is built on Unix, so it has all of the safeties (and some of the flaws) of that older operating system. One can make a good argument that the only reason Macs have had fewer viruses, trojan horses, worms and so on is simply because the nutcase hackers would rather terrorize 90% of the computer world (Windows) instead of less than 10% (OSX). Also, there are far more Windows-savvy programmers in the world than Mac. So it's not so much that Macs can't be hacked; it's that it's easier to do it in Windows. BTW, note that a Mac running Windows (as I do all the time) can easily get infected. In our case, though, we can reformat the Windows partition and get back up and running in a couple of minutes, assuming we have backups.

The only problem is, I think the reality is that most hackers causing this damage are nerds under 25 years old who have a lot of free time and very little money. The other reality is, if these guys were getting laid, they wouldn't be wasting their time hacking. And to Colinian: if you follow Steve Gibson's Security Now podcasts, you would understand why Mac OSX is more secure than either Vista or XP. The underlying permissions structure of OSX helps a lot towards that, but any other vulnerabilities are tied to specific browsers. If you avoid dangerous browsers (and I would say IE is ten times worse than Safari), you're that much safer. Gibson is a good arbiter of the relative strengths and weaknesses of Mac OSX and Windows, and his judgement is pretty sound (though some of his audio commentaries are as dull as dishwater). Both Steve and co-host Leo Laporte have championed the Mac as being much safer than Windows overall for years, and it's still true today. But the reality is that everything is ultimately vulnerable. Also, keep in mind I own four or five Windows XP machines in my house and use them occasionally. It's just that we use the other five or six Macs more often. I don't consider myself prejudiced either way, and often hate them both. I just hate the Mac less.

Naaa, all they did was hack into Safari on the web. It's just as easy to hack into IE7 and a dozen other browsers. This is old news. This security hole has since been plugged, but there's always going to be security issues when you're on the net, and/or on a website. Once a port's open, scripts are running and so on, bad things can happen. Hell, I just heard about a virus that can be spread through PDF files. That's pretty sad that you can't even trust one of those.

I just looked up "cryptic" in the dictionary, and saw a picture of a 'coon there. Coincidence?

You're never going to explain this, are you?

Yes, I'm saddened that my prediction (from my story Jagged Angel) sort of came true: a school shooting in Southern California was involved with a gay hate crime. But in my case, I had an angry gay student doing the shooting; in real-life, the gay kid was the victim. If they had stricter anti-bullying policies in effect, and if they were strictly enforced, this kind of stuff wouldn't happen nearly as often.

There was another kid in Jr. High phys ed who got bullied more than me: a quiet, slightly-older kid who was a little mentally challenged, but functioning enough that he could go to regular school. (I was the opposite: a little shrimpy wise-ass kid who was too smart for his own good.) I remember vividly one day an incident where even the Coach bullied the slightly-retarded kid, shaking him violently and screaming in his face for doing something clumsy and awkward. I regret to this day not walking up to the coach and saying, "you fucking asshole! Why don't you treat this kid like a goddamned human being!" I was a cowardly jerk for not speaking out, but nobody else in class did either. I'm still ashamed for staying silent. Because of being haunted by that incident, when I have seen things like this go on since then, even if I'm a stranger, I do stop and speak out, especially if I think somebody's bullying somebody else. I actually broke up a teenage fight on a sidewalk in my neighborhood a couple of years ago. One of them told me to "mind my own fucking business," and I flipped out my cellphone and said "I'm hitting 911 if you kids aren't out of here in five seconds." They stopped and ran.

The only reason I mentioned the "lab results on the table" bit is that this is a little bit "too TV" to me. In real life, one character would say, "listen -- in case we do this, I just wanted you to know, I've been tested recently and have no STD's." More boring, but that's what would happen. But in TV, they always go for the visual. Dollying in for the test results, then showing the character's reaction, his expression changing, would do the same thing in a more visual way. Still, it's a teeny bit contrived. Not even 1000th as contrived as a lot I see on TV, but still... It's just a moment that struck me as odd. I agree, though, it's your decision to make, and it's a good story.

I was on two other websites last night (totally unrelated to this one), and one crashed and gave me a "down for maintenance" message, and the other just stopped. An hour later, they were fine. Maybe it's phases of the moon... Or maybe there was another mysterious sabotaged internet cable in the Pacific again (which some believe could actually be a conspiracy). The idea of terrorists bringing down the internet isn't entirely impossible (though movies like Die Hard 4 are still really stupid).

Jesus, that's depressing. You figure the next story will be Billy getting a gun and shooting the crap out of the school. Are these school officials so stupid they don't understand how stupid they're acting? I hope the family sues the hell out of them. What they really should do is put him in private school, and get him to take karate lessons every day. And I'd also get him a shrink, and make the school pay for it. God, stories like this make me wanna puke. I got bullied quite a bit in middle school, but I eventually fought back enough that they left me alone. You get a good punch or two in on the bully (even if he hits you ten times), they'll stop.

Actually, no. Woody was quoting Groucho in the movie Annie Hall, which was only about ten years later (1976). And Woody won an Oscar for it. I'd also say that Woody said it better. If you know the scene, it's sad and ironic and funny, at the same time, because he's talking about relationships he's had that eventually fall apart -- for the reason stated.

Well, look at the other side: if the daughter did reveal that, at least she'd be telling them the truth. I think if she did it the right way, and didn't assign blame (as in, "your son killed himself because he couldn't bear how you would react if you found out he was gay"), there might be a way to tactfully tell them the truth about their son. At least that way, they wouldn't blame her. And if they accuse her of lying, she can say, "I have no reason to lie, because I don't care about what you think of me. I just think you deserve to know the truth, because your son would've wanted it that way." To me, once a person's dead, what's the point in not being truthful about their life? Still, it's a tragedy -- a total no-win situation. Grieving parents, dead son, upset woman. Very sad.

And just to follow up my kiss with a slap: you should think about re-writing the first chapter. I can clearly see you were a better writer by the last chapter than you were in the first, and I think a more-solid opening scene would work better.

Hmmm, not a bad story idea. One touch, and off we go. I was always intrigued with the guy in Heroes who had the chamelon-like ability to temporarily absorb the power of anybody else he was standing near. They since augmented this to give him the ability to reproduce any of their powers, almost at will, which I think kind of watered down the concept. But if I had to just choose one power... invisibility would be a good place to start. That could be very useful under certain circumstances, plus it has a built-in self-preservation feature. The "instant transportation" idea in Jumper is pretty good, too.

I agree with you completely. I actually agree with the idea of Creative Commons, but in the spirit of Woody Allen, I refuse to join any organization that would have somebody like me for a member. But seriously: you can't stop anybody on the net from stealing posted fiction. I write because I enjoy it, and I don't pretend it's for any other reason. If people want to print it out, that's fine by me. Regardless, I do put a copyright notice in my stories, just for the principle of the thing. As for Tim: I like the fact that the story goes in unexpected directions, and that the characters surprised me several times. It's definitely well-done and entertaining, and I'd recommend it without any hesitation.