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	Subtopic	Started By	Posts
	Archive through Oct 27, 2004 Last Post: Oct 27, 2004, 12:13 pm		20

Posted By: manji Oct 27, 2004 - 06:18 am

Yeah, i was shocked to hear that the Royal Marines only had some 7,000 active men. The United States Marine Corps fields some 70,000 men (10,000 of which are reservists i believe).
I am going on outdated information, though. Boot, a book about Marine Corps Boot Camp, was written in the mid-80s so i'm not 100% sure if those figures of the Royal Marines are still valid. I do know for a fact, however, that the Marine Corps has some 70,000 men currently active.
When i write battle scenes there are two things that i try to convey. 1) Brotherhood and 2) Carnage, death and chaos of war. Why? Brotherhood is just a theme i like and one of the reasons men continue to fight when the odds are not in their favor. Why do i write about the Carnage, death and Chaos? Well, it's more of an exercise really. I have yet to experience anything of the sort so it's up to me to come up with sights, smells and sounds of battle.

Posted By: manji Oct 27, 2004 - 09:18 am

Mr. D, are you a fan of the Hammer's Slammers series?

Posted By: Magus Oct 27, 2004 - 12:02 pm

Hammer's Sl;ammers? What's that?

Posted By: manji Oct 27, 2004 - 12:12 pm

A book. Military Sci-Fi. David Drake, who served with the 11th Cavalry during Vietnam as an intel officer, wrote the series.

Posted By: MrD Oct 27, 2004 - 12:13 pm

i've read them, but they have a lot missing and the characters are unbelievable in the main.

if i can get the literature and pace correct, my military service should give the sci-fi i write an edge.

you see, with the size of our army and it's competency, everybody is trained to do everybody elses job, to some extent. obviously in the command structure the lower ranks aren't let into the details of how to command from higher up. need to know on operational details. but i was trained against the old soviet union when their soldiers pretty much did one job only. shoot their officers and the rest will run round like headless chickens for a bit. shoot our officers and we'll cheer and shoot straight back

when i add up the components of a novel, the storyline, the people and places, the ideas and the technical side of things, i'm surprised anyone manages to squeeze a story in successfully in say 450 pages. each component is going to have to be carefully weighed up on importance and effect. maybe there just won't be the word count for excessive swearing, or fast scenes that can't take expansive descriptive paragraphs on the horror of war.

i have just got some ebooks, ben bovas craft of writing sci-fi and orson scott cards writing sci-fi and the great characters and viewpoints and i've forgotten which author said it, but "sci-fi novels" and "adjectives" apparently don't go together. i was hoping that adding up the elements of my overstuffed life to date and also attempting to integrate good english literature into it would come up with something really surprising, but now i realise i have to seperate the literature i use at college from the sci-fi i write.

i will go now and post a piece of literature i wrote for last years A level english where we had a very restricted word count allowance, i managed to squeeze a lot of literature in it, but couldn't maintain that for a novel or make it interesting to the target audience

Posted By: Magus Oct 27, 2004 - 01:16 pm

I haven't read it before. But it sounds interesting. I might have to give it a look, now.

Posted By: manji Oct 27, 2004 - 01:56 pm

Yeah, it really depends which one you get. Some i've read that have been awesome but some have been horrible. The new one i like a bit but y favorite is still 'Rolling Hot'.
A Conservative Uprising launches a massive counter attack against the goverment forces one night and the Hammer's find themselves trying their damndest to put out every fire on the planet at once while the native miliary freaks out. Well, The only unit they can spare to relieve th beseiged forces around Capitol City is a small unit of burnt out soldiers on light duty and mechanics with two tanks and a few armored combat cars. It's one of the better written ones.
I do agree with you thouhg, Mr. D, that with a majority of them something is missing my the newest one and 'Rolling Hot' are the best of the bunch.

Posted By: Magus Oct 27, 2004 - 02:08 pm

I hate word restrictions. I find that my works tend to be lobger then most others. I would hate to restrict my writing, I wouldn't be satisfied with my end result.

That's the thing I loved about my eigth grade english teacher. He was really big into writing, and us revising what we wrote. He taught me how valuable revisions can be. He had us write something in one quarter and then we would revise it over the last three, major revisions due each quarter. My piece was actually "The Window to One's Soul", as found in the non sci-fi / fantasy section. I added an awsome prologue and important body material as well as improved the ending and remade the title (origionally "The Trial of Tears" ). I actually went through, a short while ago, and read all of my revisions. I could hardly believe how much my work actually improved through the revisions.

Posted By: manji Oct 27, 2004 - 07:30 pm

I think someone said something about young kids not being exposed to adult oriented writings . . .
I was reading Tom Clancy novels when i was in the 8th grade. I read the hell outta Rainbow Six.

Posted By: MrD Oct 28, 2004 - 01:07 am

when i was 10 i read a sci-fi book where two females were talking in a dormitory, there was a semi-intelligent humanoid life form providing services for them. one of the women turned round to the other and explained how the aliens could provide sexual services for them by using a table condiment (like jam or something) [Too explicit. Bmat]

i remember giggling at the whole scene but it didn't cause me any sexual disfunction problems! it was quite tame really, you might think that sort of thing was written by an author trying to shock or just having something against women, but when i was 17 i went out with a girl who was supposed to have done the dame thing with her pet dog and that didn't bother me then after a little giggle!!!

Posted By: Magus Oct 28, 2004 - 12:40 pm

...

Ooooooo.k.

...

Interesting... to say the least...

**runs off to convienience store and calls up all female friends**