[FF] loJic caFe

[HuangLikeALee]

Two men are sitting at a sports bar watching television until the power of the bar goes out. Everyone else in the bar leaves except these two men. They had a lengthy conversation.

 

"Hello" said one.

 

"Hey" said the other.

 

"It looks like the power is out"

 

"How do you know?"

 

"Well, everything has turned off."

 

"How do you know the bartender didn't shut every thing off?"

 

"Well, that doesn't seem likely"

 

"Yes, but it is possible, correct?"

 

"Well, very possible, but..."

 

"It isn't likely?"

 

"Yeah"

 

"What if I told you that someone died after a car hit them"

 

"I would assume he died from being hit by the car"

 

"Would you?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"What if he died from a heart attack from seeing the car coming at him? What if he had stopped breathing previous to the accident? What if I told you he was a kidney disease victim and his kindneys had finally given out?

 

"Well, I...I don't know"

 

"You don't know?"

 

"No"

 

"Could it be possible that he could have died from anything, not just the car?"

 

"Yes, but isn't it equally as possible that he died from the car?"

 

"No. Say there were 5 ways he could have died. The car is one. That leaves four more. There is an 80% probability that he didn't die from the car."

 

"But, it is common sense that he would have died from the car"

 

"Common sense? If that was the case, than if I told you he died from lung cancer, there would be a possibility that he died from a car hitting him"

 

"Yeah, but then common sense would say he died from lung cancer"

 

"Would it? He couldn't have died from a car at all?"

 

"Well...why would you even assume that he didn't die of lung cancer?"

 

"Why would you automatically rule out a car?"

 

'because it doesn't make sense"

 

"how"

 

"if he died from lung cancer he couldn't have died from the car"

 

"So how could the first guy we talked about be killed by anything but the car?"

 

"..."

 

"I...I don't know"

 

"By the way, what is your name?"

 

"Jacky"

 

For those of you that arewondering, before I get yelled at, the uninvited guest is logic itself

Edited July 4, 2009 by HuangLikeALee

[Lochie_old]

It's riddled with grammar errors sorry, I also don't enjoy how it's just one big conversation, seems more like one of those lame jokes rather then an actual story.

[Omnia sunt Communia]

I'm going to ignore the fact that this is an obvious attack at me related to your hissy fit in the GTA NeXt forum and look at this in a completely critical sense:

 

There is no description, whatsoever in this piece. Those three lines of description you dealt us at the beginning of the story are far from enough to set the scene for the rest of the piece. You need to describe the way each person talks, what they're doing while they're talking and what they're thinking while they're talking. It's not just as simple as "he said this than he said that" (which is exactly what your story is doing).

 

Also, the opening two lines of dialogue are wrong:

• "Hello" said one.

 

"Hey" said the other.

It should read:

• "Hello," said one.

 

"Hey," said the other.

Notice the added commas. Every piece of dialogue should end with a comma after the final word and before the closing speech mark (unless there is nothing to follow it). Otherwise you're just doing it wrong.

 

Every other sentence fails to end with a full-stop and there is even some cases where you failed to capitalize the opening word of a sentence. You've even managed to miss out important punctuation marks like question marks at the end of a question.

 

Maybe you should worry less about getting worked up over some internet forum, and more about your punctuation and grammar. It might start to show up in your stories.

 

Oh, and for the record, my name isn't actually Jacky.

[HuangLikeALee]

 

It's riddled with grammar errors sorry, I also don't enjoy how it's just one big conversation, seems more like one of those lame jokes rather then an actual story.

Look, I appreciate the feedback but it was written in 90 minutes, like the rules suggests, so being a perfectionist when it comes to grammar and the like is just making it look like you didn't read the rules. Again, thanks for the feedback about the conversation thing, I thought it would fit what I was trying to do here.

 

Oh, and Jacky, this was far from an attack. It maybe was inspired by an earier incident but I was not attacking you.

Edited July 4, 2009 by HuangLikeALee

[Omnia sunt Communia]

 

Look, I appreciate the feedback but it was written in 90 minutes, like the rules suggests, so being a perfectionist when it comes to grammar and the like is just making it look like you didn't read the rules. Again, thanks for the feedback about the conversation thing, I thought it would fit what I was trying to do here.

 

The rules don't state you have to write the story in 90 minutes, 90 minutes is just an example. Since when did reading the rules equate to throwing grammar out the window? It's not about being an "perfectionist," it's more about not making simple mistakes and trying to pass them off as "I wrote it in a hurry."

 

I mean, it's not even like you did anything challenging, you just wrote about 30 odd lines of dialogue and you still managed to litter it with grammatical errors. Even adding a piece of description every once in a while wouldn't go amiss in this sea of boring, predictable dialogue.

[HuangLikeALee]

Look, I appreciate the feedback but it was written in 90 minutes, like the rules suggests, so being a perfectionist when it comes to grammar and the like is just making it look like you didn't read the rules. Again, thanks for the feedback about the conversation thing, I thought it would fit what I was trying to do here.

 

The rules don't state you have to write the story in 90 minutes, 90 minutes is just an example. Since when did reading the rules equate to throwing grammar out the window? It's not about being an "perfectionist," it's more about not making simple mistakes and trying to pass them off as "I wrote it in a hurry."

 

I mean, it's not even like you did anything challenging, you just wrote about 30 odd lines of dialogue and you still managed to litter it with grammatical errors. Even adding a piece of description every once in a while wouldn't go amiss in this sea of boring, predictable dialogue.

This wasn't more of an entertaining piece. It was more of a point. And when you are frustrated as I am right now, you might miss grammar mistakes at a time.

[Eminence]

I salute the notion of doing away with description and telling the piece through dialogue only. It's an interesting experiment to do, and you'll more than likely have learned a lot about what you can - and can't - do through dialogue by doing it. I think the message of the piece, whilst perhaps slightly contrived, wasn't too badly executed, either.

 

This is exactly the kind of piece I like seeing from the FF challenge. Something different, something that - although it may not really 'make it' - at least tries to do something a little bit different. Nice job.

[HuangLikeALee]

I salute the notion of doing away with description and telling the piece through dialogue only. It's an interesting experiment to do, and you'll more than likely have learned a lot about what you can - and can't - do through dialogue by doing it. I think the message of the piece, whilst perhaps slightly contrived, wasn't too badly executed, either.

 

This is exactly the kind of piece I like seeing from the FF challenge. Something different, something that - although it may not really 'make it' - at least tries to do something a little bit different. Nice job.

Thank you, coming from as good as a writer as you are this gives me renewed confidence which was litterately destroyed by some earlier posts.

[Eminence]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It seems a lot of feedback from certain people lately has been produced with the sole intention of tearing a piece apart without consideration for improvement; simply to label its flaws and offer no reprieve. Naturally, this isn't the ideal way to do things.

 

I especially wouldn't worry about people putting you down for giving it a shot, even if the outcome didn't end up being all that great. At least you entered it, didn't you?

[HuangLikeALee]

I wouldn't worry about it too much. It seems a lot of feedback from certain people lately has been produced with the sole intention of tearing a piece apart without consideration for improvement; simply to label its flaws and offer no reprieve. Naturally, this isn't the ideal way to do things.

 

I especially wouldn't worry about people putting you down for giving it a shot, even if the outcome didn't end up being all that great. At least you entered it, didn't you?

I have always been like that. I try hard on my writing and when someone rips apart my piece I can't get over it for days, which explains my times of absence from the forums. I give up easy, today I had just started my script and I already want to give up on it. I have given up on so many pieces already.

[Eminence]

Writing's all about taking criticism onboard and growing from there.

 

In a perfect world, all criticism would be made with the sole constructive intention of helping the writer overcome their flaws in a positive, reinforcing manner. Alas, we don't live in a perfect world. It's true that a lot of criticism may come from a source looking to ego-boost by being a touch destructive and dismissive of flawed pieces.

 

The thing you need to take from that, though, is that despite the intentions of the criticism, there's always something you can take from it. And if you just keep writing, with each piece a new mistake will be eradicated, until all of those basic errors never see the light of day anymore.

[Omnia sunt Communia]

I only just now noticed what you did with the title: loJic caFe, JF, Jacky Fiend. Very clever. Though you mispelled logic. I must admit, this is one of the more creative attacks I've recieved on this forum, most people just PM me or add me to their disrespect list - I'm glad I could be a source of inspiration for you.

[HuangLikeALee]

I only just now noticed what you did with the title: loJic caFe, JF, Jacky Fiend. Very clever. Though you mispelled logic. I must admit, this is one of the more creative attacks I've recieved on this forum, most people just PM me or add me to their disrespect list - I'm glad I could be a source of inspiration for you.

I thought it all out.

[Lochie_old]

Whats the point of getting all butthurt if someone doesn't like your writing? It's not the end of the world dude. Sure, I could have pointed out certain areas in your story that needed improvement but would you really have taken that into consideration? This is the reason why I've given up on doing the ol' "quote areas of your piece and suggest ways to fix them" because people get all upset and butthurt over it, they aren't appreciative of it enough for me to actually put time into it.

 

If you've posted this in Writers' Discussion, even for a 'challenge', its obvious that you would still appreciate feedback, so don't go all emo when someone doesn't like your piece, its not a personal attack and I'm not trying to discourage you from writing, I'm just stating the facts which you can take into consideration for the next time you write a story.

[Oxidizer]

Like others have said, I like it and mostly due to the style you've chosen to use for it; i.e. just dialogue. I've only seen that kind of thing once or twice before around here (though I'm sure there've been more instances) and I thought they pulled off something, hmm, not original but interesting and kinda unique. Though I'm surprised it took you ninety minutes to write nothing but dialogue.