Idle Fiction Jam - Rumours and Hearsay

[SuperBiasedMan]

If it helps, you don't need to do any jiggery with the Python scripts if you don't wanna. Can just run main.py from the commandline and it all works. Besides that you just need to fiddle with putting your source texts into a folder.

 

It's not a super intelligent thing, it only checks two words back, and it offers you 20 choices with the idea that you can pick good ones more so than it manages to provide a small sample of relevant options.

[juv3nal]

hmm something weird going on...don't see a main.py in the zip

 

C:\Users\david\Desktop\voicebox-master\voicebox-master>dir
 Volume in drive C is Blade
 Volume Serial Number is 0A1A-73A9

 Directory of C:\Users\david\Desktop\voicebox-master\voicebox-master

2016-07-25  06:19 AM    <DIR>          .
2016-07-25  06:19 AM    <DIR>          ..
2016-07-25  06:19 AM            11,343 corpus.py
2016-07-25  06:19 AM             2,894 ngram.py
2016-07-25  06:19 AM               309 pickler.py
2016-07-25  06:19 AM    <DIR>          raw_transcripts
2016-07-25  06:19 AM               670 README.md
2016-07-25  06:19 AM    <DIR>          saved
2016-07-25  06:19 AM    <DIR>          texts
2016-07-25  06:19 AM             3,324 transcript_parser.py
2016-07-25  06:19 AM             1,870 voice.py
2016-07-25  06:19 AM            13,842 voicebox.py
               7 File(s)         34,252 bytes
               5 Dir(s)  62,632,325,120 bytes free

C:\Users\david\Desktop\voicebox-master\voicebox-master>python voicebox.py
  File "voicebox.py", line 81
    print "cursor position:", self.cursor_position
                           ^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'

 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Oh woops, guess it was voicebox.py.

 

Also it looks it's meant to run in Python 2. That line with the error is valid syntax for version 2, but not 3. That's poor choice on their part. :/

[juv3nal]

Also it looks it's meant to run in Python 2. That line with the error is valid syntax for version 2, but not 3. That's poor choice on their part. :/

 

ah ok. thanks.

[twmac]

So, this was actually a real struggle for me, I didn't find anything that really worked for me so I went with this:
https://medium.com/@twmac/readers-like-you-d3a798660276#.lbkqe1cce

 

Took me ages to write it but I think that was because I couldn't figure out what to type.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I wont post this to Medium for reasons you'll see but I had a bit more fun and put together a little Idle Thumbs episode description. It's actually not edited after the fact, bar some capitals and punctuation. So I like what came of it.

 

Readers of his soul wandered over e3, amongst rowdy corpses that might surprise you.

I know you're having some tea, and Jake attempts an analogy of your clumsy fingertips. With special annoyance, Nick must burn people occasionally on his face. It seems disgraceful, but you cannot deny your heart. Clone her favorite book and she shall taste bitter promises of video games. On each cheek I expected you to recalibrate my life. However you were talking online about resource management games.

As Chris could become sweatsoaked with killbots I am afraid I will have to go.

 

@twmac That was a really fun new direction for a story twmac. For a lot of it there was tension because I wasn't sure what was going to be real and what would be magical realism. And it was kind of fun how you dropped in hints of the character's flaws from the start even though they were really only being addressed much later.

[twmac]

I wont post this to Medium for reasons you'll see but I had a bit more fun and put together a little Idle Thumbs episode description. It's actually not edited after the fact, bar some capitals and punctuation. So I like what came of it.

 

 

@twmac That was a really fun new direction for a story twmac. For a lot of it there was tension because I wasn't sure what was going to be real and what would be magical realism. And it was kind of fun how you dropped in hints of the character's flaws from the start even though they were really only being addressed much later.

 

My first draft that I wrote by hand was very focused on the character flaws and actually I never planned to for the story to resolve itself. The extra bit at the end was added when I realised that I would have needed a lot longer than 3000 words to tease out everything (it can be interpreted as everything happening in his head, that he is writing it all when he is blacked out or having an episode). So, I dumped the ending and rewrote it with the extra bit.

 

I'll be honest, it is a lot closer to my normal style of writing and the only part that I really enjoyed was John's complete inability to be self aware. So, after he is confronted with the bit that clearly denotes him as the sort of person who manipulates situations so that he makes himself look like the victim, that is the first thing he does when his wife gets home.

 

I really like that exceprt you created!

[Mawd]

I am actually doing a thing on this I was just really stumped last time!

[ShaunCG]

I'm also working on a 'Readers Like You' story, and hope to have it finished by the weekend. Or at the weekend. Soon, anyway. 

 

I'll read what everyone else has written once I'm done. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Cool! Looking forward to both your submissions. And thanks twmac 

[ShaunCG]

Right! I have a finished story. Work, weather, birthday celebrations and nauseous hangovers all tried to stop it - and all failed. 

 

Readers Like You

[SuperBiasedMan]

I liked that a lot Shaun! The bizarre happenings to Clara were a good vehicle to inject fun stuff through the story. There were some differing points of confusion though. Sometimes I mistakenly connected a piece of information to the previous context. For example, for a little bit I thought Clara was the one who had been viewing the information tracking different people. Then a little after that, I mistakenly thought you were suggesting the Bagpuss plushie was upside down, not the car.

 

Also one other extra minor note, I think B&H is Benson & Hedges, the cigarettes? It was clear from context that they were cigarettes, but shortening it to B&H is kinda confusing for people not already familiar. It doesn't matter enough to make it unreadable, it's just a mild sticking point.

 

This last question might not matter, because I'm not sure if I'm meant to be able to intuit this as a reader. But why was that day any different for Clara? Did they just decide to run one last ditch experiment, or was it related to their testing to determine if humans were viable/worth preserving?

 

Oh, and last last thing. I really liked the creature talking through Siri and having trouble typing. That was a funny way to reveal the horrifying truth.

 

For our new theme we've got Rumours and Hearsay!

Please ensure you include both rumours and hearsay to be considered for the cash prize. (there is no cash prize)

[twmac]

Could you provide a link to the podcast this is associated with?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Sure, here it is:

https://www.idlethumbs.net/idlethumbs/episodes/rumors-hearsay

[ShaunCG]

@twmacb - I was tickled to see this story almost immediately laying its cards on the table: it's writing about writing! Funnily enough, the original protagonist of my story this month (er, last month) was also a writer, and also fond of a drink. 

 

I like the way you set up the precognitive moments - it's a nice conceit to have those additional words on the page following an alcohol-induced blackout. I also like that there's a lot of ambiguity around these: did he write it, or did someone or something else? Are those words really on the page at all? Is he predicting the future, or making it? Okay, I'm leaning toward the former on the last point, but I like that it's not explicitly laid out. 

 

The ending doesn't really work for me, although I think it could. It's a shame that we stop following John right at what feels like a critical point: what happens next? The weird precognitive writing has converged with his superego, which feels like the last step on the road to a climax. The switch to Piotr is a nice conceit as it suggests that these odd events don't begin and end with John, but while it offers some resolution to John's story, it's a bit... conclusion ex machina? 

 

It's interesting to hear that you originally didn't plan for the story to resolve itself. I feel that that could've been a better direction to go in, but wordcount limits can be a bitch.  

 

It is quite hard to make writing-about-writing interesting because it runs the risk of being too autobiographical or navel-gazing, in a way that is less interesting to the reader than the writer. Despite your not being super happy with this story, I think it's a pretty good effort at a tough short story trope. Personally I would have ramped up the weirdness and gone full Borges, but I'd level the same criticism at my own story if I'm honest. 

 

Oh, and I love Agnieszka's putdown at the end. Sometimes a character just springs to life with a single line, and that's one of them. 

 

Thanks for your feedback on my story (elsewhere)! I opted to go with Siri and iPhones because they're something a contemporary person is likely to explicitly recognise, rather than being coy and describing a smartphone. I wanted to make it immediately clear that Picasso was using a human text-to-speech tool, and Siri is the most famous, but there may have been better ways to approach that. Ordinarily I would veer away from 'product placement', unless the story was supposed to be drenched in corporate branded shit, or otherwise demanded it. 

 

@SuperBiasedMan - I like the excerpt you generated. I cannot help but read it in Chris Remo's voice. I think this could be the new "Good news, everybody! I invented a machine that makes you read this in Professor Farnsworth's voice." 

 

Did you fork a version of the Python tool you linked, or is that the version you used to generate this? 

 

Thanks to you also for your feedback on my story. I think my scene transitions were a point of confusion last time around too, so clearly I need to think about how to handle that better. 

 

B&H is indeed Benson & Hedges. You're probably right; B&H feels like a universal shorthand to me, but I've no idea how widespread the brand or that abbreviation is. I suppose I didn't need to define the brand anyway as it's not at all relevant. I may have just been thinking "what kind of cigarette would Clara smoke?" 

 

Your instincts are correct: you aren't supposed to be able to intuit such details as a reader. I have a bunch of worldbuilding stuff established that more-or-less explains what Picasso & Friends were up to, and how some of their technology worked, but I think it works better without of that: it's just more strange, less explicable, and doesn't involve any tortuous info-dumping. 

 

Glad you found it fun (with a horrifying ending)! That's what I was going for. 

 

The story in other respects isn't what I originally planned. I had wanted to insert some subtext in there that made the dialogue between Clara and Picasso possible to interpret as the relationship between Gamergater types and games journalists. Nothing thumpingly obvious - just an interpretation that it was possible to read in. I ran out of time and will to do that, sadly, so as it is Picasso is just kind of a sadsack anthropologist who didn't want to entirely let go of his project, and Clara is just unlucky. 

[ShaunCG]

Oh, and looking forward to reading your story too, Mawd! 

[twmac]

I've finished my Rumours and Hearsay piece, it is still in an 1st draft state, but let me know what you guys think:

 

https://medium.com/@twmac/hr-84a3f06d1b78#.r66kvkm7v

 

My partner read it and she likes the Canadian nostalgia.

[Rilen]

I want this embroidered on the inside of a picnic basket. 

[Rilen]

I've finished my Rumours and Hearsay piece, it is still in an 1st draft state, but let me know what you guys think:

 

https://medium.com/@twmac/hr-84a3f06d1b78#.r66kvkm7v

 

My partner read it and she likes the Canadian nostalgia.

twmac, your Space Boss piece really got me. Especially b/c I didn't know that it was an actual song, so it had this wistful quality where I figured I would never hear this fabled song by this imaginary band. Imagine my surprise... 

My feedback on the Rumours and Hearsay draft.

I love this first draft. I think the final scene feels kind of tacked on and placeholder, and it really lacks the emotional weight of the previous scenes. Maybe just end it with her having kind of shitty day and not being able to talk to anyone about it because she doesn't know what to say? Just struggling with the indirect nature of the thing? 

I really like the changing tones, from internal to conversational scenes, but things get a little choppy. I'm sure you'll clean it up on a second pass, but to clarify I mean stuff like using "I am serious" during a drunken conversation, which sounds very stilted. It's really hard to sound laid back, but the rising tension in the group scene is really nicely stressful and getting that change in their voices will help pull it off.

Working on my entry now, excited to see everyone else's. 

[twmac]

Yeah, most of my short stories so far have had elements of truth to them. In the first it is the events of the revolution and the song, the second is half inspired by my own grandmother who has been diagnosed with Alzheimers, the third is primarily about me dealing with living in Thailand and writing, but not doing much else (the Thai professor who shot two coworkers is actually a real thing that happened here in Bnagkok a few months ago).

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

As for the language used. Finn and Alistair's speech patterns are based on two Canadian friends from when I lived in Montreal. The 'I am serious' is something he would say all the time. Would like to know more stuff that didn't work for you in the dialogue. You'll be amazed how cogent some people can be even with a few beers in them.

 

As for the ending.

 

You are absolutely right, I struggled with that part. The point is supposed to be that Alistair isn't all bad, but that he is clueless to the point that he doesn't get it but he wants to. I don't think it fully works but I didn't want Ange's story to end with clueless, careless men in the backwaters of Quebec. Your suggestion is better but I'd be gutted if I left her that way.

 

Look forward to reading some more entries!

[ShaunCG]

Hey all, just wanted to drop a quick message to say I have almost finished something for this month. I'll probably finish and publish it tomorrow morning. 

 

However... knuckles may need rapping. I've already exceeded the word count, which was an accident, and I interpreted the brief 'creatively' and made a Twine game instead of writing a traditional story, which was not an accident. 

 

I shouldn't massively exceed the word count - maybe by 1000 words or so. 

[ShaunCG]

Better late than never: here's my take on Rumours & Hearsay. 

 

(Lest I seem rude: I've been discussing twmac's story with him over email!) 

[ShaunCG]

So, er... is the Fiction Jam an ex-jam? 

[twmac]

Looks like it, or people are just busy.

[dibs]

More like fictional jam, amirite?