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[Stroggy]

Originally posted by Playbahnosh@Jun 9 2005, 10:07 AM
WOW!

Sebatianos, Stroggy --- CONGRATULATIONS! k:

I didn't thought there are succesful authors here with award winning and actually published novells...* :blink:

I wouldn't call myself award-winning.

Oh, another reason I wasn't satisfied with my book was because I wrote it in Dutch. Dutch is an okay language but I still find languages like French and English (and even German) much more handy as they have some words that carry more... weight. It is difficult to explain. Regular dutch can be a very dry language and that is often a problem in many dutch books. In English books even a very simple character can gain some depth from the words he uses to explain himself, Dutch doesn't have this, the characters seems sterile and the author must make an extra effort to sculp his character.

I recently had to read a book for Dutch Literature called "De Avonden" ("The Nights") it's basically about a young man after the second world war, he lives in the Netherlands together with his mom and dad and he is bored and depressed. At night he searches for things to do and he contacts some old friends (who he hardly knows) and so the book inches forward with little to no plot.
Such a book needs a good structure and interesting characters to be interesting, however it fails at delivering convincing or dynamic characters, all of them seem to be cardboard copies of eachother, the only character with some depth is the main character.

Come to think of it there are very few Dutch books (that don't use dialect language) that actually have realistic characters in them.

I think the hardest part is finishing chapter one.

An all too familiar problem, I know how my story basically begins and ends, but the actual first chapter and the chapters between the beginning and the middle are proving to be quite difficult since you must combine two things: plot continuation and character build-up. It is in the first quarter of the book that you can make or break a character.

[Sameeralord]

I have thought of writing books. I have written 2 fun books long time ago. I don't feel like writing books anymore. With the birth of AGS I tried to make some games. Do some writing for dialougues and all that. That didn't become successful cause it was bit hard to draw graphics. Actually the graphics were not a major problem I needed some one to help me. Anyways sorry for the off topic lines. I statrted writing a faq for FF10 and it went quite well. But I lost the interest after a while. Write now I'm hoping make a game using AGS this coming HOLIDAYS.

[Quintopotere]

Originally posted by Stroggy@Jun 9 2005, 11:57 AM
Dutch is an okay language but I still find languages like French and English (and even German) much more handy as they have some words that carry more... weight.

You don't know italian...

I think that english can be good, but it's hard to write a masterpiece...

[troop18546]

I started work on a book last year. It's located in Abandonia too.

[Sebatianos]

Originally posted by Stroggy+Jun 9 2005, 01:57 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Stroggy @ Jun 9 2005, 01:57 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Playbahnosh@Jun 9 2005, 10:07 AM
WOW!

Sebatianos, Stroggy --- CONGRATULATIONS! k:

I didn't thought there are succesful authors here with award winning and actually published novells...* :blink:

Dutch is an okay language but I still find languages like French and English (and even German) much more handy as they have some words that carry more... weight. It is difficult to explain. [/b][/quote]
Thanks of congratulations Playbahnosh, but it's not such a succes one might have hoped for (although it's nice to give literrary performances nation wide).

Stroggy - I know what you mean. Sometimes words from other languages carry more weight, can me more specific and so forth, but what I found out is thet usually all of this is due to the language forgethfulness.
There are some ancient words almost not used in Slovene that would perfectly describe some things I want to put on paper - but in some cases I was actually unaware of these words.
Sometimes just trying to write archaic gives a certain effect (just try and read some old technical/agrocoltural manuals, really old newspapers - that should greatly enhance your native vocabulary).
It's sad but true - ususally people who learn a foregin language are better familiar with the specifics of that language then of the specifics of their own (for me it really helped to just sit down and read newspapers from 1920's - my native vocabulary really became significantly larger over the night). You don't only get poetic elements of the language (such as those you learned while reading high literature, you also get the regular language of the past). Most of these words weren't used too much, because there are things people didn't talk about much, so the words fell to oblivion. They later got replaced by foregin words (mostly english, aldo german and french).

Try reading a pre WWII newspaper and you'll see what I mean - you've nothing to lose.

[Indignus IV]

@Doc Adrian

I know what you mean. I have literaly hundreds of "first chapters" where i just gave up after the first part. I'm hoping to work more on my current book (you can download it earlier in the post) but I'm getting bored of it. I really hope to start work on it again.

[Puffin]

I got a poem published once.
Think they said they printed it in 200.000 - 250.000 copies.. something like that.

[Doc Adrian]

Originally posted by Indignus IV@Jun 9 2005, 12:56 PM
@Doc Adrian

I know what you mean. I have literaly hundreds of "first chapters" where i just gave up after the first part. I'm hoping to work more on my current book (you can download it earlier in the post) but I'm getting bored of it. I really hope to start work on it again.

I write a few things at a time for that reason...work on one of them for a while...then switch. Its very easy to get bogged down and not want to work on it.
Discouragement will kill ya quick.

I remember reading that Stephen King threw Carrie in the garbage can and his wife fished it out and he worked on it some more. So Mrs. King saved a good selling book. I don't throw anything away anymore I just lock them in cabinets til doomsday.

So Ig, better get that story out and finish it up..the world needs to see it

[Indignus IV]

Yeah, I dont throw them away, but they get lost in time. This is kinda like the "Quitting Smoking" topic. I am addicted to NOT writing the book!

[Stroggy]

Originally posted by Sebatianos@Jun 9 2005, 01:51 PM

Try reading a pre WWII newspaper and you'll see what I mean - you've nothing to lose.

Well that is just the thing with Dutch, the past few years we've been reading a lot of old Dutch books (pre world war 2 books and poems dating back from before the Great War) and the language is always almost exactly the same, except for some near-german terms (instead of "altijd te laat maar nooit te vroeg" it says "altijd zu spä, maar nooit zu fru" = "always too late, but never too early") there really isn't a big difference.

Even the oldest sentance in dutch is obviously dutch except for a few changes "hebban olla vogala nestas begunan hinase ik enda tu" in ancient dutch, now "hebben alle vogels nesten begonnen behalve ik en U" = "have all birds begun nesting except for me and you"

Dispite my teacher's greatest efforts dutch is a rather poor language in terms of vocabulary, and even if you do find an archaic word it is often a french term.