Discussing the Writing Challenges -- November and December 2010

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HareBrain said:
This has been bugging me for ages, and hopefully someone will have a concise explanation so it doesn't drag the thread off topic.

Irish Gaelic was originally written down only in Ogham characters, which bear no relation (far as I know) to the Roman alphabet. At some stage Gaelic spelling had to be Romanised. So why wasn't it done anything like phonetically? Why did some monk or other, thinking of the word pronounced "shee" decide that the best Roman alphabet version of it was "sidhe"?

Oh, and so far, only SF has commented on the idea of more varied genre being used. Anyone else for or against?
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Just guessing here. There is still huge local variation in how modern Irish is pronounced. Donegal people, for instance, don't bother pronouncing the accent, or fada, on words. There was probably a time when Irish was pronounced closer to the phonetic spelling, but then got Anglicised.
Incidentally, in modern usage, Samhain is the Irish for November, and it's derivative, Oiche Shamhna (pronounced ee-ha how-na, should be a fada on the i) is Halloween.

And I'm up for different genres, unless someone goes for "Restoration Comedy".
 
digs said:
Ah'm root-tootin' dosh-garn-dang-damn in fer a Western yaaaaaaa'll <- my attempt at a Western (which mutated into Ned Flanders). Choose Western at your own peril.

Seriously though, I'm all about other genres. Bring it on!
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Scientifiction directly replaced the Western genre. To a large degree in the pulps, it did. And the concept of deep space as the frontier... The spaceships are th' horses and the aliens are the injuns. It's a good sub-genre for a spaceoperatic send-up, I reckon, podner.
 
Some other candidates:
  • The Ways of the Worlds (after William Congreve)
  • The Bose Strategem (after George Farquhar)
  • The Bizarre Body (after Susannah Centlivre)
 
Hi all,
I'm new here, so I'm hoping for a gentle entry into this world.
Having said that, I still charged into the November challenge on my first day, so perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment...

Anyway, to get back on track about the genre vs genre thing; I've always thought that at the core of all genres is a single thing: story. Most stories could quite easily be told as westerns/science-fiction/fantasy/historical/modern/literary novels.

I like the GRR Martin quote above, that it's all about the furniture.
There's a very thin line between a lot of genres, as J Riff said about science fiction basically being a replacement for the the western genre.

The only issue I have is with those of us (humans, not people on this forum or writers generally) who have to pigeon-hole books/stories as being unworth of interest because they are one thing and not another, when the reality is that if a good story is well told, it speaks to a deeper self inside all of us that will appreciate what we are being told, regardless of the language used or the "furniture".

PS. By the way, I'm Irish, and have absolutely no idea why the spelling of our language is not phonetic, given that it was chiefly a spoken language up until a couple of centuries ago, and that the spelling was only standardised fully in the early years of the 20th century.
 
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chrispenycate said:
Well, I need a hundred. At least ninety-nine. I can't talk short, can't write short.

But I'm not going to get them, so hey ho…


But there is a difference of style between the genres; you can write a convincingly Fantasy robot (perhaps whirling a lariat from horseback) or an SF vampire; I hate to think how many aliens on paper or film are elves, goblins or demigods with a thin coating of greasepaint. (all of Star Wars, for a start). Still, the genuine single genres geeks (which status I can no longer pretend to) will immediately see through the methadone coating and demand the genuine hit – even if the story told is exactly the same. When you're massaged by the medium (or even, in some literary examples, quite large and noticeably overweight) cosmetic details do count.
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Come back Yul Brynner - All is forgiven
 
As a matter of interest, was there any particular reason 75 words was chosen instead of, say, 100, or even 50 (Imagine that!)?


Wecome aboard, Mad Iguana! Things can only get madder for you now, I'm afraid.
 
J-WO said:
As a matter of interest, was there any particular reason 75 words was chosen instead of, say, 100, or even 50 (Imagine that!)?
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I can't remember if there was any particular reason, or if it was a fairly arbitrary choice, but I've often thought since that it's the perfect number. 50 and you'd have almost no chance of telling a whole story except in the most efficient, unnatural-seeming prose imaginable; 100 would make it too easy. Mine almost always come in first draft at around 90, the real challenge is to prune off those 15.
 
J-WO said:
As a matter of interest, was there any particular reason 75 words was chosen instead of, say, 100, or even 50 (Imagine that!)?

Wecome aboard, Mad Iguana! Things can only get madder for you now, I'm afraid.
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Since Teresa is likely still recovering from surgery, I will answer this question.

If you look all the way back you will discover we had some conversation about this. This contest was Teresa's project and she chose 75 words because at one time she had been with a group of people who had been given this challenge and she was the only one who completed it. She thought that this (ummm shall we say) off kilter group would not find the challenge as intimidating as the group she was with. She hung by that number because (and she was wise here) she felt that given a fairly large number of entries, which is what we have had, many more words would start to make reading through them a chore more and more people would avoid. --- (I've not read any of her fantasy stuff, but if she uses presence in them it might be from first hand ability.)
 
Some really varied and interesting entries so far. I have to single out No One's though. I just love it. Already read it about twenty times.
 
I like Leishas story... and she managed to use aphotic, relucent and sempiternity in a 75-word story. Is there anyone didn't have to look at least one of them up? Very nice.
 
I just took the character's word for it that it was beyond comprehension. ;):)
 
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