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Arrow

8:37pm Sep 26 2012

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Really nice responses, guys. Thank you. <3

September 26, 2012 | Application

Fix the mistakes in this paragraph
--RMAIL WORK--

Do you honestly think you're better then me? Well, I have news for you, bucko. We're over with, done, kaput. Your so self-centered, so absolutely positively egotistical that you never cared about me, did you? I never want to see you again, I don't want you to come near me, I can't stand the very sight of you. Stealing they're cookies just to satisfy you're crave for sugar? Those were old ladies you stole from.





hello my name is elder price
Pegasus

7:41am Sep 30 2012

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Do you honestly think that you're better than me? Well I have news for you, bucko. We're over with, done, kaput. You're so self-centered; so absolutely, positively egotistical that you never cared about me, did you? I never want to see you again- I don't want you to come near me. I can't stand the very sight of you. Stealing their cookies just to satisfy your crave for sugar? Those were old ladies you stole from.


Not sure if there were really punctuation errors, as in fiction writing almost anything goes for the sake of flow, but some parts I decided to change just to go with the simple sentence rule. It felt a tad more right for me ^^



CH

7:48am Sep 30 2012

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Posts: 7,283
Psst. Tryst. Read Shad's post again. Rmail work. <3



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Arrow

12:24pm Sep 30 2012 (last edited on 12:28pm Sep 30 2012)

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xD No, that's quite alright. Almost everyone has sent in an Rmail already. I'm going to post y'alls Rmails anonymously, but I want to point out that Tryst made a really good point, something that I hope y'all will notice. 

"Not sure if there were really punctuation errors, as in fiction writing almost anything goes for the sake of flow, but some parts I decided to change just to go with the simple sentence rule."

And here's the thing. There were things that weren't wrong with some of the sentences, but y'all decided to throw in semi-colons or commas, even periods sometimes. And that's alright. Let me show you the variety of work I received. 

♦♦♦♦♦

Original: Do you honestly think you're better then me? Well, I have news for you, bucko. We're over with, done, kaput. Your so self-centered, so absolutely positively egotistical that you never cared about me, did you? I never want to see you again, I don't want you to come near me, I can't stand the very sight of you. Stealing they're cookies just to satisfy you're crave for sugar? Those were old ladies you stole from.

We're over with. Done. Kaput. You're so self-centred--so absolutely, positively egotistical, that it's clear you never cared for me.

We're over with, done, kaput. You're so self-centered, so absolutely, positively egotistical, that you never cared about me, did you? 

 Well, I have news for you, bucko. We're over with. Done. Kaput. (<-- :u I dunno.) You're so self - centeredso absolutelypositively egotistical. You never cared about me, did you?

Do you honestly think that you're better than me? Well, I have news for you, bucko. We're over with, done, kaput. You're so self-centered and so absolutely, positively egotistical that you never cared about me, did you?

♦♦♦♦♦

All of those up there are correct (note some of you wrote the same stuff so it's not all posted up there). They just have different pauses, different tones and ways to convey one message. Well done, y'all. 

I'll be posting another lesson and application soon. Stay tuned. ^^;





hello my name is elder price
Detneth106

1:57pm Sep 30 2012 (last edited on 3:40pm Oct 3 2012)

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September 30th | Who vs. Whom

Today Det is going to be teaching you about 'who' versus 'whom'! Are you all prepared? No? Well, too bad. We're going to do this anyways.

Both 'who' and 'whom' are pronouns, meaning that they represent someone or something. However, where and when to use them can be tricky. It isn't just a matter of style, but also a matter of basic grammar rules.

The difference between the two has to do with the 'subjects' and 'ob.jects' in a clause. A subject is the main person or thing who is doing something, while the ob.ject is the person or thing having something done to them.

ex. Samantha hit Jeremy on the shoulder. "Stupid!" she cried.

Here, Samantha is the subject (she is hitting Jeremy), and Jeremy is the ob.ject (he is being hit by Samantha).

Moving back to the topic of 'whos' and 'whoms', in writing you use 'who' when you are referring to the subject, and 'whom' when you are referring to the ob.ject.

ex. "Who hit Jeremy on the shoulder?" Jason asked.
"Samantha did," Marty replied.

or

ex. "Samantha hit whom!?" Jason exclaimed.
"She hit Jeremy," Marty answered.


| Application
--RMAIL WORK--

____ said that? It certainly wasn't me!

Tell me a secret and I'll tell you ____ kissed me.

To ____ did you say that!?

With ____ will she be going out to dinner?

We all looked at Toby, ____ was dancing wildily to the music.

____ did the serial killer attack this time?

Carl was satisfied with the first man ____ Hayley dated.




Logo
Pegasus

3:48pm Oct 1 2012

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Oops I read that post a few times and I somehow totally missed the rmail work part. Sorry ^^; 
I was waiting to go to work as well and kind of rushing to post. I'll be better next time, promise. 



CH

3:56pm Oct 1 2012

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Posts: 7,283
It's okay, Tryst! We love you anyways. ;o;


we hate you just as much as we did before your mistake. //shot 



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Honeybee

8:54pm Oct 5 2012

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Posts: 1,191
Hi, everyone! I guess I'll just go ahead and jump right on in with my lesson. You probably all know me.


October 5, 2012 | Paragraphs

I've seen one too many stories ruined by a wall of text because somebody either used paragraphs badly, or not at all. This lesson will aim to help you out with all those pesky little indentations.

Here's an example of what your eyes will do upon seeing a text block:

--
Skies heavy and dripping shadows like oil onto a field of decaying corpses. An obsidian creature shone in the half light being emitted by titanic mushrooms that reached to the sky shining with a blue light. The being was covered in scales as large as shields. A great, unblinking eye of writhing maggots; without warning, it dissolved into hundreds of headless crows that started to feed on the bodies that Ian stood upon. A shadow fell over him as a cruel laugh sounded. Turning around, a hulking woman stood and leaned down to look at the jaguar. Her face was defigured, split in half by a mask of muscle that showed the cold eyes that were black, even where whites should have shown. “It appears we have a snack for the crows here,” she whispered in a seductive, silky voice that belonged to anything but the monstrosity that stood before him. “Huginn, Muginn. I have something for you to eat...”Sitting straight up, Ian choked back a scream as he panted, ears turned back and eyes panicked. “What are we going to do,” he whispered softly, shuddering as he brought his knees up to his chest. A single tear slipped from his eye as he recalled the feeling of being eaten alive by the two ravens."You'll keep moving." Ian started at the voice and turned to see Erebus sitting across from him with a concerned glint in his eye. "I told Hatter to be more subtle on you," said the Rabbit. "I knew you would have a harder time with this than your friend." "How would you know?" Ian asked softly, resting his chin on his knees as he stared at the coal coated rabbit's frosty blue eyes. "The same way we lured you to the Looking Glass. We've kept a close eye on you two for a long while now and Wonderland needs a rallying point now more than ever before. In all honesty..." "What is it?" "I didn't want to bring both of you through the Looking Glass. We could have done it as well--a part of the spell that I wove was once you left your realm, all trace of you would be gone until you returned. I told Julius that only one of you was needed, and to be honest I almost succeeded. You would have come into Wonderland on your own the first time you saw the Looking Glass, but Julius held me off until you brought Jukai. I'm glad he did." "So I would have been the only one here?" "That is correct." With that, Erebus sighed softly and looked out towards the glowing leaves. 

--

That post is the epitome of what you want to avoid. Most likely, you skipped right over the text wall, or gave up trying to read it. 
There's also a good chance that your teachers taught you how to use paragraphs in the wrong way. A lot of people seem to think that you should only use paragraphs when using dialogue, which I'll get to later.
Paragraphs are used to block off different subjects. The way I think of it is that each paragraph is a bit like a chapter on its own; it focuses on one subject. When there's a new subject, you switch paragraphs. This is why we change paragraphs when flipping through characters speaking.

Here's an example of what you SHOULD do.

"Hi, Laura!" called Mark, running to his friend and tackling her into a pile of leaves.
"Mark!" Laura yelled out, laughing as she fell to the ground.
It was late November now; what leaves that still clung to their trees with a vengeance were withered and brown. Titanic piles of the things loomed on most peoples' front yards, only to be deemed useless as another wave fell upon their pseudo-tidy beds of grass.

--

As you may have noticed, I used several kinds of line breaks in that little episode.
1. After Mark was done talking, I broke into a new paragraph with Laura.
2. Since Laura falling to the ground had nothing to do with leaves falling off trees, I switched to a new paragraph.
3. If I had continued with Mark and Laura's conversation, I would have put a line break after each statement.

But here's the fun stuff~


--

| Application

Below are two walls of text. Your job is to fix them so that they correctly use paragraph breaks.

--

Skies heavy and dripping shadows like oil onto a field of decaying corpses. An obsidian creature shone in the half light being emitted by titanic mushrooms that reached to the sky shining with a blue light. The being was covered in scales as large as shields. A great, unblinking eye of writhing maggots; without warning, it dissolved into hundreds of headless crows that started to feed on the bodies that Ian stood upon. A shadow fell over him as a cruel laugh sounded. Turning around, a hulking woman stood and leaned down to look at the jaguar. Her face was defigured, split in half by a mask of muscle that showed the cold eyes that were black, even where whites should have shown. “It appears we have a snack for the crows here,” she whispered in a seductive, silky voice that belonged to anything but the monstrosity that stood before him. “Huginn, Muginn. I have something for you to eat...”Sitting straight up, Ian choked back a scream as he panted, ears turned back and eyes panicked. “What are we going to do,” he whispered softly, shuddering as he brought his knees up to his chest. A single tear slipped from his eye as he recalled the feeling of being eaten alive by the two ravens."You'll keep moving." Ian started at the voice and turned to see Erebus sitting across from him with a concerned glint in his eye. "I told Hatter to be more subtle on you," said the Rabbit. "I knew you would have a harder time with this than your friend." "How would you know?" Ian asked softly, resting his chin on his knees as he stared at the coal coated rabbit's frosty blue eyes. "The same way we lured you to the Looking Glass. We've kept a close eye on you two for a long while now and Wonderland needs a rallying point now more than ever before. In all honesty..." "What is it?" "I didn't want to bring both of you through the Looking Glass. We could have done it as well--a part of the spell that I wove was once you left your realm, all trace of you would be gone until you returned. I told Julius that only one of you was needed, and to be honest I almost succeeded. You would have come into Wonderland on your own the first time you saw the Looking Glass, but Julius held me off until you brought Jukai. I'm glad he did." "So I would have been the only one here?" "That is correct." With that, Erebus sighed softly and looked out towards the glowing leaves. 

--

"Damn!" I swore. "Damn it, why the hell did it have to happen to us?" "Calm down, William. Jesus," Rich said quietly. "You'd think somebody murdered your favourite pet or something." "Oh, shut up. How the hell are we supposed to get by in Paris? I can't speak bloody French!" Groaning, I flopped down onto my cot. We were in our shared bedroom in the Paris Thieve's Guild, commonly known as the Jury. As with all of the guilds, the motto was simply not to steal from the poor and not to betray your faction. Other than that, free reign. Of course, it was common to do a jailbreak for a member sent to prison, but that didn't happen often. The Guild doesn't take just anyone off the street. However, I had to admit that the Paris faction was much better off than the London faction. The room was cozy enough; a shared nightstand and dresser, an oil lamp, and two cots. Rich had taken his bag, and I had done the same. Personally, I was obsessively tidy when it came to my bag. Lockpicks were set in a secret compartment; coin purse with a meager amount of gold was in the front pocket while another secret compartment lay on the bottom of the pack for stolen coin purses. It was muffled in wool--I'd learned the hard way that police would occasionally dump the contents before shaking a bag hard to check for any loose coins in pockets like mine; A plain striped alpaca scarf I'd filched from a nightstand somewhere back in Canterbury; fingerless cotton gloves lined in fleece, swiped from a bag in a bar. A small Bible that I looked through only for the Thieves' Laws going from page 24 to 42. And then the most valuable item I owned; a thin kindjal, the steel imbued with a soft blue colour that I assumed was from tinting it while it cooled. I wasn't sure what was in Rich's bag. I'd sewn up matching compartments in his, but he'd emptied it out while I did it. I really couldn't care less.

--

Rmail the two fixed walls to me when completed.



my name's russ and i only care about uldavi and cute men
Arrow

7:18pm Oct 10 2012

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October 10, 2012 | Update

Thanks to all of you for keeping up with the thread and participating. Really, I didn't expect this much of a turn-out. Y'all are really amazing. So I've talked with Det and Russ and we're going to take a break from the lessons and applications for a little bit.

Instead, we're going to play a game.

| "Consequences" 

When Det and I went to writing camp together, we played this game with all of the other campers (which was extremely hilarious, though some of the hysterics were because of our lack of filtering). In this game, one person wrote a single sentence on a piece of paper, folded the paper over so no one else could see it, and passed it on. The next person did NOT look at the prior sentence, instead wrote another one, and passed that on. This continued until we got around the entire circle. After that, we read it aloud.

Laughs every time, even when it didn't make sense.

You can write anything you want, as long as you abide by Res rules.

So this is how it's going to work--each of you will Rmail ME one sentence. I will put all of your sentences together in one post in the order I'm Rmailed in. This way, it stays a bit true to the real life version of the game.

We'll play a few rounds, each time with a bit of a different twist on it.

So start posting!

People who've Rmailed me

None







hello my name is elder price
CH

8:22am Oct 27 2012

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Posts: 7,283
This was forever ago. I can still rmail, right?



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Arrow

3:41pm Nov 1 2012

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Yes. Yes, you may. /sobs
This is dead already.





hello my name is elder price
CH

3:49pm Nov 1 2012

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Posts: 7,283
; - ;
I can start advertising again. -sobs too-

I'll send a rmail soon. c:



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Meg

3:59pm Nov 1 2012 (last edited on 4:00pm Nov 1 2012)

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I rmailed you weeks ago. It is too bad this is dying D:



Arrow

4:00pm Nov 1 2012

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If I happen to get more Rmails, I'll put them together. I've only gotten about 4.





hello my name is elder price
CH

4:02pm Nov 1 2012

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Awh. It better not die. 8( 
We can all get it back up. :D



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GreenKat

8:07am Nov 3 2012

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*Helps push it back up*



GreenKat

3:56pm Nov 4 2012

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Dont die thread. D:


Is it okay if I give my own mini lesson?



Arrow

4:00pm Nov 4 2012

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Sorry Kat, but only the people who I have accepted as staff may post lessons. 





hello my name is elder price
CH

4:05pm Nov 4 2012

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Posts: 7,283
Oh I didn't know that.
Now I look all derpy, never posting anything.
Oh well. :T



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GreenKat

7:53pm Nov 8 2012

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Well there's nothing for me to do then. I was going to do a lesson about realm of reality, but oh well.

Anyway....

Got enough people for that game yet?




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