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On June 22 2011 17:03 Cel.erity wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2011 16:07 cursor wrote:
I'd copy and paste the Negative review of it from Amazon here, but you guys can go check it out for yourselves. It is very poignant and almost antagonistic, because it's obviously made to both criticize the writing style and be better written that the book. Interestingly, I checked out the Amazon reviews for the book, and found one positive 5-star review. I quote: "Read this book when it came out based on a facebook recommendation. I really liked it! Was lots of fun  ". This review was submitted by one Wesley Mitchell. Hmmmmmmmmmm.....
Oh, for crying out loud, that's silly. The husband has been very supportive, and assured us time and time again that the book "actually is very good! (...) classic 300-paged thriller set in a Starcraft environment! (...) really realistic battle reports!", but I've seen nothing of the sort in the sample chapters.
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the Dagon Knight4005 Posts
As another writerly person on TL, I don't mean to be down on this, but:
The rest of his teammates were scattered throughout the map, embroiled in their own battles, and no help would be forthcoming in time enough to be useful.
He was on his own.
Serenity: gg newbs wp
BOBLOBLAW: TYVM
ProfPlum: I thought you were a goner, Captain. That was pretty gosu
This sounds like a monument to self-parody...
I'm not sure if that's sufficient to stop me picking it up.
+ Show Spoiler +The coolest part of the sample chapters was that I know a guy who plays using the id BOBLOBLAW
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On June 22 2011 14:07 suspiciousbear wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 22 2011 12:39 Chef wrote:I'm going to tell you something that upsets every writer the first time they hear it: Don't start sentences this way. It is always more effective to write directly. "He cracked his knuckles and set his fingers to work on the keyboard." Maybe that sounds like the same thing, but trust me if you replace every sentence you wrote this way your book will read about 100 times better. If you're genuinely interested in becoming better at writing, please consider rewriting some of the paragraphs this way, and rereading them for yourself to see if it helps. I can't help you have better ideas, but I can tell you that this is one of the first things regular readers groan at when reading amateur fiction. Once you start noticing it it's horrible. This completely sums up why I find the writing itself to be so hard to stomach. A ridiculously disproportionate amount of the text is written this way. This makes everything so disjointed for me, it's not a pleasant read at all. I love that the writer found an interest in Starcraft 2 and wanted to write a story based around it, but even the best plot (which isn't present in this book) wouldn't be able to do it for me if it's being hampered by such viscous writing.
I really agree with these posts. There's something about the writing that put me off, and these posts helped sum it up. The real problem is that the writing tries to be "ornate" rather than just tell things simple and straight.
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Plain and simple english is almost always better.
Couldnt get past the first few paragraphs, was instantly turned off by the writing style.
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I read the sample chapters.
Since it is a novel, I accept that it is no documentary. The events don't need to be 100% realistic. I also accept that the novel looks somewhat like an SC community exploitation novel, but this is a good thing in the sense that Starcraft goes into mainstream.
But I cannot stand the writing. The writing is strange, not very streamlined. I would buy it even though the story don't look very original if the hero would not be named Sean Boxer and if the writing would be more standard English.
If I would write a book about a Starcraft player, I would establish the hero as a solid player who however has a particular weakness in his play, preventing him to come out at top. Of course he also struggles with his real life. Then he needs to make a choice: Either practice more, to get rid of the aforementioned weakness, or sort out the biggest RL issue. He picks the first. As he finally overcomes his big playing weakness, the other players also have improved their skill. So the hero still don't win the ultimate championship. But he gets recognized, gets a good clan offer which he accepts and he is able to both follow his gaming career as well as take care about his RL.
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the Dagon Knight4005 Posts
On June 22 2011 22:36 [F_]aths wrote:
If I would write a book about a Starcraft player, I would establish the hero as a solid player who however has a particular weakness in his play, preventing him to come out at top. Of course he also struggles with his real life. Then he needs to make a choice: Either practice more, to get rid of the aforementioned weakness, or sort out the biggest RL issue. He picks the first. As he finally overcomes his big playing weakness, the other players also have improved their skill. So the hero still don't win the ultimate championship. But he gets recognized, gets a good clan offer which he accepts and is able to both follow his gaming career as well as take care about his RL.
No way, man! Play the tragedy card; at the very end of the book, he stands on stage, accepts the GSL trophy and looks out into the crowd, looking for the girlfriend he neglected so that he could finally add that tiny little bit of polish to his game, and realises that she didn't come to see him in his finest hour. She wasn't there to see what all the hardship and the waiting was for.
Tears run down his face and in all the celebration, there's nobody there who can understand how much it's cost him to get where he is.
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Lol at the "battle reports"
cant appease everybody.
the hardcore fans wont like it.
the non-fans wont like the idea of reading a book about a video game.
hopefully the swarms of newbs will like it?
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On June 22 2011 22:52 ComaDose wrote:
Lol at the "battle reports"
cant appease everybody.
the hardcore fans wont like it.
the non-fans wont like the idea of reading a book about a video game.
hopefully the swarms of newbs will like it? Someone has to make the first step.
I really can imagine a TV show about a fictional SC2 training house. The protagonists struggle with both tournament success as well with RL issues and every show features a Starcraft match which is somehow important to the story. That TV show features real pros from time to time, who are special guest stars for one episode.
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I'd like to also point out (since it has been brought up more than once) 75k words is not really 300 pages for most books... The pages would have to be pretty small (yeah, some books are like that) and the writing kinda spacey (lots of cheap books are like that to try to look longer, but also some are like that just so people with bad eyes can read them). My 95k word book is only 226 pages, or about 20 pages shorter than what Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was, if you have that (which has by no means large pages, they're actually a little smaller than what is standard these days). It very much depends on typeset size etc, but don't think you are in for an epic here... This is a novel which got ended early on what would be page 160 of most books (which given the topic, is not the most reassuring thing). It's kind of like writing a 10 page essay... When you get to page 6 or 7 you start thinking 'if I just decreased the margins a little I would have a lot less work' hahaha... Of course you'd fail, so you don't do it. The light novel is actually a format I kind of like tho, so I don't mind books of that length... But it's clear this person set out to write a full novel, and 75k words might be the very minimum with a lot of type setting for that. Stretching that to 300 pages tho would look silly... A lot of good novels aren't much longer than 200 or so pages, there's no reason to make it 300 unless you want people to feel like speed readers (I read that page in less than a minute!).
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On June 22 2011 23:14 Chef wrote:
I'd like to also point out (since it has been brought up more than once) 75k words is not really 300 pages for most books... The pages would have to be pretty small (yeah, some books are like that) and the writing kinda spacey (lots of cheap books are like that to try to look longer, but also some are like that just so people with bad eyes can read them). My 95k word book is only 226 pages, or about 20 pages shorter than what Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was, if you have that (which has by no means large pages, they're actually a little smaller than what is standard these days). It very much depends on typeset size etc, but don't think you are in for an epic here... This is a novel which got ended early on what would be page 160 of most books (which given the topic, is not the most reassuring thing). It's kind of like writing a 10 page essay... When you get to page 6 or 7 you start thinking 'if I just decreased the margins a little I would have a lot less work' hahaha... Of course you'd fail, so you don't do it. The light novel is actually a format I kind of like tho, so I don't mind books of that length... But it's clear this person set out to write a full novel, and 75k words might be the very minimum with a lot of type setting for that. Stretching that to 300 pages tho would look silly... A lot of good novels aren't much longer than 200 or so pages, there's no reason to make it 300 unless you want people to feel like speed readers (I read that page in less than a minute!).
What in the hell are you talking about? Page counts can vary widely. A dialogue heavy novel can easily be 300 pages at 75k words. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was 76k words and 300+ pages. Oh but I guess in Chef world JK Rowling was just silly stretching and clearly set out to write a full novel then stopped at the bare minimum.
P.S. Is your 95k word book even published?
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On June 22 2011 23:48 StorkHwaiting wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2011 23:14 Chef wrote:
I'd like to also point out (since it has been brought up more than once) 75k words is not really 300 pages for most books... The pages would have to be pretty small (yeah, some books are like that) and the writing kinda spacey (lots of cheap books are like that to try to look longer, but also some are like that just so people with bad eyes can read them). My 95k word book is only 226 pages, or about 20 pages shorter than what Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was, if you have that (which has by no means large pages, they're actually a little smaller than what is standard these days). It very much depends on typeset size etc, but don't think you are in for an epic here... This is a novel which got ended early on what would be page 160 of most books (which given the topic, is not the most reassuring thing). It's kind of like writing a 10 page essay... When you get to page 6 or 7 you start thinking 'if I just decreased the margins a little I would have a lot less work' hahaha... Of course you'd fail, so you don't do it. The light novel is actually a format I kind of like tho, so I don't mind books of that length... But it's clear this person set out to write a full novel, and 75k words might be the very minimum with a lot of type setting for that. Stretching that to 300 pages tho would look silly... A lot of good novels aren't much longer than 200 or so pages, there's no reason to make it 300 unless you want people to feel like speed readers (I read that page in less than a minute!). What in the hell are you talking about? Page counts can vary widely. A dialogue heavy novel can easily be 300 pages at 75k words. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was 76k words and 300+ pages. Oh but I guess in Chef world JK Rowling was just silly stretching and clearly set out to write a full novel then stopped at the bare minimum. P.S. Is your 95k word book even published?
Hey, this thread is about making fun of someone else's book, not his.
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On June 22 2011 07:43 susySquark wrote:
Even if it's something little, like "He ducked his head and walked a little faster in the rain, wondering if, in fact, he was getting his glasses wetter by jogging..." And then the audience thinks, "Oh, I totally know someone like that!" Or if you're me, you go, "Oh, I totally do that! If I go faster, I add a relative horizontal component to the velocity of the raindrop which makes it hit the plane of my glasses more! Surely there must be an optimal speed to walk at the minimizes time out but ...." and so forth.
No way me too! ^^
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I can appreciate the effort, but those sample pages made me cringe...
May be bearable for the age 10-14 demographic though (still a stretch).
On June 22 2011 06:49 Phil Phoenix wrote:Have you read Ender's Game? I haven't read anything about this book except for the description in the OP and I can promise you that this is NOTHING like Ender's Game.
LoL, that is exactly what I was thinking when I read that post :-)
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On June 22 2011 07:08 Alabasern wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2011 06:49 Phil Phoenix wrote:On June 22 2011 04:30 fearlessparagon wrote:
Sounds like Enders game Have you read Ender's Game? I haven't read anything about this book except for the description in the OP and I can promise you that this is NOTHING like Ender's Game. They are very different. This proves objective writing isn't easy. It's take massive subjective involvement. I'm still very happy for Erika Mitchell, she did something. As an intelligent animal I feel the ordinary is overlooked as obvious.
I didn't mean to imply anything about the quality. I just meant the stories of the two books are clearly very different.
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lol holy shit this sounds like an amazing read, gonna go get me a paperback when it's released :D
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On June 22 2011 22:46 SirJolt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2011 22:36 [F_]aths wrote:
If I would write a book about a Starcraft player, I would establish the hero as a solid player who however has a particular weakness in his play, preventing him to come out at top. Of course he also struggles with his real life. Then he needs to make a choice: Either practice more, to get rid of the aforementioned weakness, or sort out the biggest RL issue. He picks the first. As he finally overcomes his big playing weakness, the other players also have improved their skill. So the hero still don't win the ultimate championship. But he gets recognized, gets a good clan offer which he accepts and is able to both follow his gaming career as well as take care about his RL.
No way, man! Play the tragedy card; at the very end of the book, he stands on stage, accepts the GSL trophy and looks out into the crowd, looking for the girlfriend he neglected so that he could finally add that tiny little bit of polish to his game, and realises that she didn't come to see him in his finest hour. She wasn't there to see what all the hardship and the waiting was for. Tears run down his face and in all the celebration, there's nobody there who can understand how much it's cost him to get where he is.
Oh man, we should write a new book in this thread and get it e-published.
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is this fiction or non fiction?
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On June 23 2011 00:34 LarJarsE wrote:
is this fiction or non fiction?
...fiction. It's about a guy who practices for the GSL playing 3v3 games.
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On June 22 2011 17:24 HoMM wrote:Show nested quote +When I first announced that PWNED was coming out, a friend of mine, in the interest of being a good friend, asked me if it was ready. If it was the best it could possibly be.
At the time I answered yes, because I thought (and still think) that it’s a great story. Now, though, I’m inclined to think it’s not the best it could possibly be.
The reason being that I’m not as good at writing as I will ever be. I could keep every book I write cloistered on my computer for decades, and just work through them with a fine-toothed comb every time I learn a new technique. I could spend my entire life re-writing and revising them, convinced they’re not ready because of my fear of what I don’t know.
I’m not interested in doing that.
This is me fully admitting that I’m a writing noob. PWNED is not the Great American Novel, and I fully admit to having room to learn and grow.
What I also fully admit to is loving the story, the characters, and the plot. I had so much fun writing this book, and it shows. I’m steeling myself for the inevitable bad reviews on the horizon (because trolls are everywhere and I’d be foolish to think they’ll ignore me) but I’m also just really excited to share the story with whoever is interested in reading it. Doesn't sound too promising + money leaving esports scene and going to book companies and authors isn't what I like.
We actually set up the Amazon link with Team Liquid so they get money for each purchase
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*ogles at the leggy Collosi*
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
--
Also, the T in GSTL stands for Team, as in Team games, as in 3v3's.
Of course.
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EPT
