vwl

I trust that you are aware of the whole series of Michael Arram books, which you can find at the Best-of-Nifty.org site, reachable by clicking on the button above. There is a whole history behind THoOP that really starts with the first in the series on the Michael Arram list.

Hannah Arendt's great book Eichmann in Jerusalem is subtitled On the Banality of Evil. In real life, it is the functionary who makes no protest to the evil that is occurring. It is the person who allows homophobia to go unchecked rather than the homophobe himself. Given the population of the world, there will always be people who commit bad and even evil deeds. There will always be Hitlers; there will always be attempts at "final solutions." But the evil ones who banally carry out the awful orders from above. In literature, however, banal adherence to evil from above is not literarilly sexy, so the evil-doer must also be the evil-instigator. I suspect that Saddam Hussein's sons were as close in real life as evil-doers in fiction life would be.

Just an alert that Dermot in the high-school section of Nifty looks promising. Six chapters have been completed.

I agree that things have to be changed, but they don't have to be "radically different." Very little is radically different in this world, in my view. That said, the theme of child prodigies having problems isn't new. The movie Vitus is an interesting take on the subject (with a music setting), but Searching for Bobbie Fischer -- a wonderful movie, by the way -- explores some of the same themes. Good child actors fall by the wayside constantly, while some, like Jodie Foster, manage to pull through the ups and downs of notoriety. In Palouse, I've stolen bits and pieces from these sources (not to the extent of plagiarism), and have tried to build a different story, but not radically different except to the extent that it is extended beyond the outcome in the Oregonian story -- and subsequent followups.

I agree wholeheartedly that real-life stories can be used as a basis for novels, novellas or short stories. I am nearing the alpha-stage completion of a 200 page a novel/novella that I call Palouse based on a series of stories that appeared in The Oregonian newspaper and which are reprinted here http://search.oregonlive.com/%22lost+in+the+music%22 under the title Lost in the Music Parts 1 through 3. I've changed the circumstances and names, of course, and made the main character gay, but the basic themes of a struggling prodigy have been retained in the context of a love story. A news or magazine account can trigger a plot for a novel or define a character. Once a novel is begun, of course, the characters take on lives of their own, as they have in Palouse, so that the end result becomes something new and different even though it may be faithful to the original roots.

Ah honoroble closing. I join the others in my condolences. vwl

If I remember right, the phrase "two nations separated by a common language" is Churchill's

I think we need to distinguish between "setting" and "a sense of time and place." They are not the same. The setting might be two guys having a glass of wine in a sidewalk cafe in Paris. A sense of time and place might be the same cafe in the midst of the German Occupation, with the dim lighting of war, the streets full of bicycles instead of automobiles and the constant fear of arrest and the punishment exemplified by a purple triangle. Same setting, very different sense.

I didn't mean to suggest that every novel had to have a strong sense of time and place--just that I liked such novels. In the gay-romance genre, there are fine stories in which the place doesn't make a lot of difference--Ardveche's Educating Alex, for example, which is on nearly everyone's best of Best of Nifty lists. The relationship developed in it is the centerpiece of the novel, and the dialogue is brilliant. Outside of this genre, there are plenty of excellent examples of time-and-place novels. One of my favorites is the Patrick O'Brian Master and Commander series, set in Napoleanic times on a British warship and in England. The details are incredibly well researched--science, warfare, medicine, food, Parliamentary intrigue, Admiralty intrigue, etc. In fact, the only error that I have seen remarked upon is in O'Brian's reference to a musical piece that had been written when the story took place but had not been published. In the mystery genre, there are scores of examples of well-drawn times and places. This mystery-genre point is apt, because mysteries, like gay-romance stories, involve constantly reused themes, and time-and-place effects distinguish them one from another.

I find that I am partial to stories that evoke a sense of time and place, so I thought it would be fun to exchange lists of good gay-romance stories from Best of Nifty and the Net or otherwise. The stories I like have a real sense of verisimilitude. My selections are: The Mike and Danny series of which Two Men and a Pickup are currently at BoNN. This series to me evokes a good sense of the farming country of Nebraska and the rough-and-ready people who live and drift through there. Lem - which evokes the rodeo world of Northern Montana and the young riders trying to break into the circuit. The Lizard - at Gay Authors. This story made me feel as if I was growing up in Florence. It's written in English by a German, so the translation can be rough.

Definitely. rec

As a reviewer for Best of Nifty, I am always on the lookout for good story prospects. Here are some tips. New writers need to be encouraged, so they should be forewarned when they embark on stories that rely on what I call Karaoke Plots, plots that appear over and over in the gay-romance genre. When the goal is excellence in writing and the plot is a Karaoke Plot, the writing burden increases significantly: the sense of time and place needs to be well drawn, and character development becomes crucial. Here's my start of a list of Karaoke Plots: 1. Lifetime friends finally realize that they are both gay. 2. Co-workers are sent to a convention/training session to discover that there is only one hotel room left, usually with one bed. 3. Sexually repressed jock is assigned a nerd tutor. 4. Co-workers spend nights and weekends to complete a major company project, falling in love with each other. and the list can go on. Setting out this list doesn't mean that these plots should be avoided. Rather, the list is a caution that if the plot is Karaoke, the rest of the elements of a good story need extra attention.

Even though I don't always agree with you, I appreciate your comments, Pee Jay. Columbus Avenue is part of a series of stories and doesn't really make a lot of stand-alone sense. Over the next couple of months, I'm going to group those stories together, at least to make the reader aware of the whole set of stories.

In support of your WWI effort, I trust you have read Pat Barker's wonderful trilogy, Regeneration, Eye at the Door and Ghost Road, which has gay themes in the background of Britain's WWI participation. Two real-life characters in the story--Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen--were gay.

Below is an analysis of the Supreme Court oral arguments from Scotusblog.com, and here are the Full case documents. There's a fine background section in the URL above. Analysis: With an undercurrent of fear running across the Supreme Court bench about drug abuse among school students, and a perception that young people will try hard to avoid detection, the Justices searched anxiously on Tuesday for a way to clarify ? and perhaps to enhance ? public school principals? authority to conduct personal searches of the youths in their charge. The result was that a federal government attorney and a civil liberties lawyer appeared hard-pressed to persuade a majority that strip-searches of students should be very strictly curbed in public schools. What was less clear, though, was how a majority could come together to spell out a new Fourth Amendment principle to govern that situation. It was common for members of the Court ? and, especially, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ? to express discomfort with an Arizona prinicipal?s order for a close-to-naked search of a 13-year-old girl. But that sentiment did not appear to be as strong as the concern that drugs may be so destructive for teenagers that some surer means of detecting them had to be acceptable under the Constitution. No more telling illustration of the Court?s mood emerged than Justice David H. Souter ? whose vote would almost have to be won for student privacy to prevail ? expressing a preference for ?a sliding scale of risk? that would add to search authority ? including strip searching ? based on how school officials assessed whether ?sickness or death? was at stake. ?If the school official?s thought process,? Souter asked, ?was ?I?d rather have a kid embarrassed rather than some other kid dead,? isn?t that reasonable under the Fourth Amendment?? Stated in that stark way almost compelled agreement, without regard to whether a student singled out for a strip search was actually adding to such a risk, but was only the target of a classmate?s unverified tip. Along with Souter, two other Justices whose votes might turn out to be crucial ? Stephen G. Breyer and Anthony M. Kennedy ? were plainly more concerned about the drug problem than with student privacy. Both of those Justices, in past cases involving students and suspected drug use, have suggested that students? rights were not very sturdy. The argument in Safford United School District v. Redding (08-479) left the clear impression that the Court was ready to rule expressly on the constitutionality of strip-searches at public schools. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., sought a few times to raise the possibility that school officials in the case might be found to have legal immunity for the search, so the Court would have no need to write a clear-cut Fourth Amendment ruling, but that approach apparently drew support from no other Justice, at least at this stage.

Also, to get a better guarantee of good stories on the BoNN list, check out the ratings. Those with 100% ratings and a lot of reviewer votes are likely to be very good stories.

Not that I'm complaining, but last week the number of downloads of the BoNN pdf file doubled, all in a day or two, after an increase of one or two a day. Did we get a mention somewhere that raised the interest? Or is the doubling just a fluke in the counting algorithm. vwl

Oops. This comment was for Stand by Me. "That was a splendid example of how to write a short story--settig up the story quickly, not trying to introduce too many characters, remaining compact. Congratulations."

The reason for rules--better, conventions--is communication--on two levels. First, an author needs to communicate the basic narrative of his or her story so that the reader comprehends the basics of the plot. Without rules, tha author might as well be writing in tongues. However, the author also is trying to communicate the poetry of his narrative--the feelings, beauty, emotions--and poetry has fewer rules. So there will always be this dueling between basic and poetic narrative. Who is to say that Fitzgerald or Hemingway is too basic and Faulkner too poetic? The poetry that Fitzgerald and Hemingway produce from simple sentences is, arguably, equally at a similar level as Faulkner's several-page-long sentences and unannounced switches of point of view. As an editor, the test has to be: Does it work? Does what the author put on the page work? Or, can it be made to work with tweaks? If the editor doesn't think that it works, either the editor or the author is off base. And, unless there can be an understanding between them (perhaps after some vigorous debate), then it is time to split the relationship. Young/new authors often need the eye of a strong editor to point out what works and doesn't work (I don't count you in this group, Cole). So, I would urge young/new authors to have patience with a good editor until the understandings are established or the relationship is terminated. Editors have an obligation, however, to foster the author's work, even in ways that may be unconventional as long as communication continues. Creativity and communication must balance each other. Case in point: Over at Nifty there is a story in young friends entitled Lem. The author needs an editor, but an editor at the polishing edges, not one who might stifle an incredibly original writer. The story is perched on the rim of the exceptional, but a willful editor could easily destroy the Montana vernacular, the sense of place and time and the whole tone of the story. Ultimately, Cole, there is no correct answer to your question; you need to decide if this editor is benefiting you, and he or she needs to decide how much leeway to give you the author. I ramble. Enough said.

I am impressed by the superb attention to and freshness of detail in stories like Lem--currently in progress in the young friends part of Nifty--and all of Rock Lane Cooper's stories (at crvboy.org and elsewhere). An example from Lem: "Dane's in his bed watching TV. His bed sits a bit higher than mine, like a bunk bed, and it leans against the other wall" The first sentence is sufficient to keep the story going; the second sentence adds several levels of richness. I like it. In teaching about how to compose music, Bach outlined three steps: 1) set the themes; 2) elaborate on the themes, and 3) provide embellishment and ornamentation. If writing were like composing, the detail would be added at th end. As an author working through the draft of Palouse, I have a technical question of authors who put a lot of detail in their work. [The answers may differ for each writer]: The question is: Do you (generally) write your story with the addition of (substantial) detail in the early stages or do you come back closer to the end and add the details as ornamentation as part of the closing process, so to speak?

Faulkner, in Absalom! Absalom!, for example where the POV changes frequently without warning and sentences run on for pages. But it was a very difficult read. Beckett, in Krapp's Last Tape.

I just want to comment on the purpose of rules and conventions in writing: they are not there to be straightjackets for the author. No, they are there to facilitate communication between the author and the reader. To me the purpose of writing is twofold: 1) it is the means by which an author expresses his ideas, narrative and story, and 2) it is the means by which the author communicates his work to the reader. In order to communicate with the reader, it is necessary to have conventions and grammar and spelling rules, which don't have to be hard and fast but have to be sufficient so that the reader and the writer are on the same communication plain. But the reader is not a captive, forced to read whatever the writer provides. The reader has to be enticed, and that means that the pipeline between the author's words and the reader's eyes needs to be as free of obstacles as possible. The conventions of tense, grammar, spelling, etc., help remove the obstacles The author needs to realize that reader has thousands or millions of choices, and the easier he makes it for the reader to absorb what he has written the more likely it will be that the reader will stay with what the author has produced.

The computer and word-processing programs offer a whole range of alternatives to changing tense (or italics or bold) that have not been fully explored. For example: Change the color of the type or font for, say, flashbacks. Use a different and distinguishable font. Change the background color. Use text boxes. Use buttons to open new windows outside the main narrative. etc. What's wonderful about this on-line genre is that we can experiment and find out what works for the reader without the confusion of multiple tenses. Plus, we can stay with the tried and true.

Maybe it's worth starting a new topic: "How to Judge a Story for the Best of Nifty." -- Pecman

I took no offense at your comments. I was merely trying to outline the BoN situation. It would be easy for me simply to add what I liked, but somehow that seems to be the best of vwl (or best of God--take your pick) and not the BoN. By the way, Rottentomatoes.com maintains one of the best compilations of movie reviews, with ratings and the ability to click on a reviewer and to search by reviewer if you've found somebody that you agree with.