Oolite Bulletins

El Viejo wrote:

Some are here, and a couple of guys are making custom sigs on request - here and here.

Thanks EV - I will think of a suitable CV and PM Mobius on the ED Forum (scrabbles around for log on details...)

Thargoid wrote:

Are two letter acronym's becoming the new three letter ones? Or are you trying for an MBA?

Purely coincidental/accidental. I don't want an MBA - a part-time MSc was quite enough higher education for me (although work thinks I'm doing a PGCert - although I haven't attended any classes for a year...)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I will play a tiny part in this whole writing for ED malarkey - as I pledged last minute to write a Drabble for Selezen's RPG book (I actually wrote the drabble first - sent it to Selezen - who gave it the thumbs up, so then I scrabbled around to find the cash to pledge!)

It's a good feeling - although I've not told my better half how much pledging for the game itself and the various writing projects has cost me over the last couple of months... (to be fair she hasn't actually asked...)

This is looking good.

Cheers,

Drew.

Latest update live, first of my pledger interviews and a new video... Enjoy.

http://www.wagar.org.uk/elitereclamatio ... nsibility/

Cheers,

Drew.

Sounding good, Drew... nice to see Rolling Thunder in that pic.

Latest update is live:

http://www.wagar.org.uk/elitereclamatio ... oy-events/

Another pledger interview and a tour of my solar system to boot.

Enjoy.

Cheers,

Drew.

line 3: complacent, rather than complacant.

Fixed, ta!

Cheers,

Drew.

Just got my first two chapters and the prologue back from my publisher with some comments... Always a bit nerve wracking! Plenty of stuff to sort.

Fortunately...

"It’s very nicely paced and the story is coming together well. I’m looking forward to seeing more."

Better keep writing, I guess!

Cheers,

Drew.

This week's update includes space battles, which witch is which and the important subject of cussing in the Elite : Dangerous universe. Your contributions are required!

Also included is a pledger interview with our very own Oolite Combateer, John Hoggard (Daddyhoggy).

It's all a little early this week as I'm stuck at work for the next two days.

http://www.wagar.org.uk/elitereclamatio ... the-enemy/

Enjoy!

‘Witchspace’ is now the collective noun for these mysterious locations – rather different from the original Elite.

Fascinating... I'm enjoying seeing history being re-imagined.

On the subject of 'cussing', my preference is to use real contemporary swear words... but very sparingly.

One typo: 'judicious use of the ellipse'... should be ellipsis (or ellipses, maybe).

On cussing: either use real swear-words, or none at all, is my opinion. I'd avoid the use of made-up words: the novel is written in contemporary English, so if you want a profanity, there are plenty real ones to choose from. "Frak", "drokk", "grud" etc. all have their place - but it's in comic books. It was one of the more jarring things in the remake of BSG, which was manifestly not a kids' show. I'd avoid the use of ellipses, as well: "Oh sh...!" and the like just looks coy.

It is possible not to use any kind of profanity at all: the pirates in Treasure Island are fearsome and threatening, and Long John Silver dominates each and every scene he's in, despite the total absence of any word that you might hesitate to read to a small child. He is absolutely not diminished as a character because of his lack of Anglo-Saxon expressions.

You can work around the subject, if you want: "Jameson cursed, softly and eloquently"; "Jameson stifled an oath"; "Jameson unleashed a string of profanities"; "Jameson gave a wordless roar"; etc. Or (this is the option I went for in the Hesperus stories) you can take contemporary English words and make them into oaths: "Blood and death!"; "Love and death!"; "Blood and life!" "Blood and bile!"; etc. I think "bile" was the most noxious bodily fluid I ever mentioned ...

That works, I think, for a certain mood and style. Ultimately though you've got to pick what's right for the mood of your story, and the voices of your characters. If a character genuinely needs to let one rip, go with the real thing - but only if there is genuine need. It can be more powerful to leave the details of certain elements in a story to the reader's imagination: this can, I think, sometimes be one of them.

I left my response to your ponderings as a comment to the blog...

As I said on the frontier forum, I'm firmly in the "no swear words needed" camp. As disembodied said, it's easy to infer a potty mouth without actually needing to specifically write the words.

And as I said, these books will be read by kids of all ages, so I think, it's safer to err on the side of caution and make the books accessible to all ages.