I want to say that as a writer I am always glad to find other people who enjoy writing.

One thing that stands out is after reading I am left wondering a bit more about Dextor. Who is he? A good writer once told me, "Kid, once you introduce a character, the reader should already have a picture of them in their head--unless you are withholding that information for some other stylistic reason." The point is (I guess) I wasn't left with a picture of Dextor. Now maybe cause this piece isn't, it is not in this section. Nevertheless, I find that very important because, IMO, the reader should be able to connect with the characters.

The section where you talk about the woman (who had the out-of-body experience) really overloaded the paragraph.
This spirit is then free to roam places the body could never go – flying and floating throughout the person’s surroundings at its leisure. In the meantime, the physical shell it once inhabited stays sleeping in bed, unmoved but completely aware of where the spirit has traveled. Sometimes the spirit goes out to spy on close friends, sometimes it flies around for fun. One woman claims her aura was flying around watching her after she died. Her spirit floated out of her body and into the corner of a room where she could see her lifeless body on a hospital bed, surrounded by a crew of doctors and nurses trying to revive her from the sleep of death. Sadly, for her, the doctors could not succeed in bringing her back to life. How this woman ended up telling her story to everyone afterwards is quite the mystery, considering she passed away. It is likely that an expensive phone number for “Free Psychic Readings” popped up after she was finished telling this tale.
That should be two paragraphs. In addition, before I read the end I was skeptical cause I was thinking, "Who did she claim this to? She was dead!" Though you go on to explain it, you don't do that until the very end so the whole time I am thinking that. I don't know if it was kind of like a punch line but I would have put that info in the first couple of lines.

Your use of diction is quite well. I only problem I can see is this work seems to lack major detail. Maybe that was your intent? Take this line:
This grassy hill was his favorite spot in the world because it felt like the only place he could go to let his restless mind go free.
This is a very good line. It is powerful. But after writing it, you don't support it with much. Why was it the only place he could go to let his restless mind go free? You bring up streetlights in the next sentence, but really, why does this place let his mind go? That is just two or so examples of the lack of detail. None-the-less this is a very good piece. I loving reading abstract writings--this being no exception.

I'm no writer but what you have done so far kept me interested, keep it up and continue on with it

haha ^^^ "dub" lol haha im high. referring to the above posters sig
ooh like the avatar too

Thanks for the input! I appreciate it...

BAV - care to post any of your work?

Eventhough I'm writing a screenplay, I find explaining things in explicit detail and having them relate to a specific scene or the general story daunting to say the least.

BAV made several dead on points. The one that is really important is knowing who your character is. If you don't know who Dexter is, what is motivations are, et all, then the reader won't know who he is either. I learned from the man I spoke to on monday that if you haven't establish who the character is in the first 20 pages, then you'll loose your audience. Eventhough a book or novel allows you to be more room to indroduce all of the character's personna, you still have to 'paint the landscape'.

One thing that helped me develop my characters is once you have the general story sketched out (doesn't have to be polished like a pearl. Revisions will always come down the road), start on developing each character with their likes, dislikes, personal background, etc. It doesn't have to be more than a page or so. Once you have a basic sketch of Dexter lets say, then (and this moght sound strange) write up a question and answer session with Dexter. Pretend as if Dexter was real and you want to ask him to describe himself to you. It can be a page or two, but it helped me to bring out my character's personalities. Questions like, "How do you feel about...?", or "Why do you think that...?" Having a conversation with you character can give you an idea of who Dexter is and from that you can continue to build knowing of where you're starting from and where you want to go.

I really like your writing style. Your use of imagery is plesant to see. No dialogue just descriptions for the reader to interpret. However, I don't know who your audience is. Is your book for children, young adults, adults...? You can't use words that a 24 yr old can understand and have the book be for a 12 yr old. So that's another consideration that will help when developing the story.

Hope you keep up with your book! Like the guy told me monday, once I'am commited in writing my screenplay I can't take a day off. One day will eventually turn into two, then three, then a week, and then a month later all the motivation is gone.

Bon chance!

I'm Ghost!

Ghost Dragon

Alright, so I've had this strange desire to write a book lately. I can't really explain the desire, but I've decided to take action on it and have penned out a few pages. Would you all mind giving input? I know the few pages are out of context and feel incomplete, but its as far as I've gotten. Thanks!

UPDATED: I've added a few more pages to this initial chapter. I still realize Dexter needs some major character profiling, but the way I'm telling the story doesn't allow for that just yet. Please let me know what you think! Thanks

Dexter was lost he often was. It’s not that he had a difficult time getting from one point to another – at least not in a geographical sense. He was clever enough to find his way around by knowing which side of the sky the sun will set on, or even how the location of a few stars could give him a pretty good idea of which direction he was walking. The problem was that Dexter’s current wanderings were through a very interesting place that no one else could ever see. It was a place where no amount of navigating by even the most seasoned of sailors would have done any good in developing pathways or maps. You see, the place where Dexter was lost was in wandering mind and he couldn’t find out exactly where it was taking him. But he certainly did not mind.
It was just past three in the morning, and Dexter was lying on a grassy hill in his backyard. This grassy hill was his favorite spot in the world because it was the only place he could go to let his restless mind go free; something about the open view into the horizon made him feel like any thought he had would be safe to roam around without fear of being labeled “crazy” or “weird”. The hill was far enough from the street that the city lights didn’t cloud the sky with their humming white glow, and the funny way the hill bent into itself made for quite a nice little bed to lie in. Dexter had rolled up one of his hooded sweatshirts underneath his head, and was quite comfortable in this little crevice. Even if he was not quite comfortable, it probably would not have mattered to him. His eyes were darting back and forth across the pitch black sky, and if anyone had been watching him they would have seen that he was totally oblivious to anything happening around him. Being the time of night that it was, an entire population of militant black bugs found it safe enough to come out and scour for food. Tonight, their preferred route was across Dexter’s left arm. They marched diligently in a perfect line, but occasionally one would stop to try a nice nibble of the flesh underneath its miniscule legs. Most people would have brushed the trespassers off the very second they invaded the arm, and then gotten up to leave because the itchy blades of grass that poked the back of their neck would have been the equivalent of ancient water torture. But this was not the case with Dexter - he didn’t care. In fact, he honestly found so much fascination in the sprinkles of light on the twilight canvas that he simply failed to notice the bugs or grass at all. He was having an out of body experience.
Many people tell terribly eerie stories of their own out of body experiences. In the strange of the night, their spirit is somehow stretched out of their physical bodies. This spirit is then free to roam places the body could never go – flying and floating throughout the person’s surroundings at its leisure. In the meantime, the physical shell it once inhabited stays sleeping in bed, unmoved but completely aware of where the soul has traveled. Sometimes the spirit goes out to spy on friends, other times it flies around for fun. One lady claims her aura was flying around watching her after she died. Her spirit floated out of her body and into the corner of a room where she could see her lifeless body on a hospital bed, surrounded by a crew of doctors and nurses trying to revive her from the sleep of death. Sadly for her, the doctors did not succeed in their endeavor. Just how this dead lady ended up telling her story to everyone afterwards is quite the mystery.- but it is likely that an expensive phone number for “Free Psychic Readings” popped up after she was finished telling this tale.
Dexter’s experience wasn’t nearly as interesting. In fact it probably wasn’t even a true “out of body” experience, because the essence of his being was trapped inside of his mind rather than zipping around the city like in the other stories. As his eyes took large bites out of the starlight, he felt almost as if he was flying higher and higher into the sky. The details of the luminary bodies came into clearer focus, and as he flew higher Dexter could see rich blues mixed into the dark black of the sky. Constellations grew larger and larger until each one broke up and separated into individual beacons of light that called out into the blackness. Surrounding each one of the stars was a wispy smoke of color that had been invisible before. The ambiance of color between each star was as unique and different when compared to one another as the irises of two different human eyes. Dexter was gaining speed as he soared towards the stars, but his eyes never broke contact in his cosmic staring contest. Each star was absolutely captivating in his eyes, but one in particular has caught his attention. While all of the other stars radiated one color, this one radiated all colors and each of the colors was composed of more colors. The star itself was pouring out beautiful music, and each glowing tentacle of paint was dancing to the song of its master. As the color-streams dashed to and fro across the surface of the Great Star, all of the surrounding sky began to look more real; so real that Dexter began to believe that the stars were not balls of gas, but living creatures who populated the sky and interacted with one another. One star would greet another star by flashing its blue glow towards it, and the other star would respond with a small series of flashes. The brightened bodies would then move closer together, eventually sharing in the surrounding energies both possessed. Strangely, as more stars began to join one another like this, the balls of light did not become larger or more powerful. Rather, they became more beautiful and their light became more focused. The focus of this light was, of course, towards the Great Star. The Great Star seemed to be calling an audience together, and a sense of anticipation filled the great auditorium where all were gathered for a spectacular event. As the crowd of celestial bodies continued to swarm into one another, and then into the audience of the Great Star, Dexter watched with his mouth wide open and his mind quite confused. He had never seen the night sky literally come to life, though now that he saw it actually doing so, it did not seem strange to him that it could. Something as vast as the universe must surely be full of mysteries, he reasoned. And he now had a front seat to one of those many mysteries being revealed. Being in the right place at the right time had never really applied to him before now.
When all of the nightlife had finally found its position around the Great Star, the strangest but most expected thing began to happen. Dexter’s rapid ascent into the sky stopped, and he came to a complete standstill. The floating he now experienced felt quite similar to that feeling you might experience after having been jumping on a trampoline for several minutes. Even after getting off of the trampoline, the whole earth still feels as if it is bouncing. It is hard to jump again, because your feet feel like they’ve been filled with concrete. And so it was with Dexter – though he knew he had stopped flying, his body still felt as if it had a great deal of velocity surrounding it. When he tried to move his legs or arms, all of the motion felt exaggerated and weighted down. At first he thought the sensation was quite cool, sort of the same feeling you might expect if you were visiting a planet with no gravity. But after several failed attempts to do simple things like scratch his nose or reposition himself in order to see better, Dexter concluded that he was much more comfortable when he was lying in the grass. At first he struggled with the claustrophobic feeling, but he soon realized there was nothing he could do and that a continued struggle would cause him to miss out on the events unfolding before him. It was quite lucky for him to pay attention to the Great Star when he did, because at that very moment the nocturnal symphony began.
The beauty of what Dexter witnessed next was very difficult for his mind to comprehend, so you can imagine that finding the right words to describe such an event will be quite difficult. What he immediately noticed was that every sound ended. The rushing of solar winds, the curious song the Great Star sang, even the rapid beating of Dexter’s own heart all came to be silent.

Mobster4Christ Wrote: Alright, so I've had this strange desire to write a book lately. I can't really explain the desire, but I've decided to take action on it and have penned out a few pages. Would you all mind giving input? I know the few pages are out of context and feel incomplete, but its as far as I've gotten. Thanks! __ Dexter was lost he often was. It’s not that he had a difficult time getting from one point to another – at least not in a geographical sense. He was clever enough to find his way around by knowing which side of the sky the sun will set on, or even how the location of a few stars could give him a pretty good idea of which direction he was walking. The problem was that Dexter’s current wanderings were through a very interesting place that no one else could ever see. It was a place where no amount of navigating by even the most seasoned of sailors would have done any good in developing pathways or maps. You see, the place where Dexter was lost was in wandering mind and he couldn’t find out exactly where it was taking him. But he certainly did not mind. It was just past three in the morning, and Dexter was lying on a grassy hill in his backyard. This grassy hill was his favorite spot in the world because it felt like the only place he could go to let his restless mind go free. It was far enough from the street that the city lights didn’t cloud the sky with their humming white glow, and the funny way the hill bent into itself made for quite a nice little bed to lie in. Dexter had rolled up one of his hooded sweatshirts underneath his head, and was quite comfortable in this little crevice. Even if he was not quite comfortable, it probably would not have mattered to him. His eyes were darting back and forth across the pitch black sky, and if anyone had been watching him they would have seen that he was totally oblivious to anything happening around him. Being the time of night that it was, an entire population of the little black bugs that crawl in and out of the blades of grass was marching diligently across Dexter’s left arm. Occasionally one would stop to try a nice nibble of the flesh underneath. Most people would have brushed the trespassers off the very second they invaded the arm, and then gotten up to leave because the itchy blades of grass that poked the back of their neck would have been the equivalent of ancient water torture. But this was not the case with Dexter - he didn’t mind. In fact, he honestly found so much fascination in the sprinkles of light on the twilight canvas that he simply failed to notice the bugs or grass at all. He was having an out of body experience. Many people tell terribly eerie stories of their own out of body experiences. In the strange of the night, their spirit is somehow stretched out of their physical bodies. This spirit is then free to roam places the body could never go – flying and floating throughout the person’s surroundings at its leisure. In the meantime, the physical shell it once inhabited stays sleeping in bed, unmoved but completely aware of where the spirit has traveled. Sometimes the spirit goes out to spy on close friends, sometimes it flies around for fun. One lady claims her aura was flying around watching her after she died. Her spirit floated out of her body and into the corner of a room where she could see her lifeless body on a hospital bed, surrounded by a crew of doctors and nurses trying to revive her from the sleep of death. Sadly for her, the doctors could not succeed in bringing her back to life. How this lady ended up telling her story to everyone afterwards is quite the mystery, considering she passed away. It is likely that an expensive phone number for “Free Psychic Readings” popped up after she was finished telling this tale. Dexter’s experience wasn’t nearly as interesting. In fact it probably wasn’t even a true “out of body” experience, because the essence of his being was trapped inside of his mind rather than zipping around the city like in the other stories. As his eyes took large bites out of the starlight, he felt almost as if he was flying higher and higher into the sky. The details of the luminary bodies came into clearer focus, and as he flew higher Dexter could see rich blues mixed into the dark black of the sky. Constellations grew larger and larger until each one broke up and separated into individual beacons of light that called out into the blackness. Surrounding each one of the stars was a wispy smoke of color that had been invisible before. The ambiance of color between each star was as unique and different when compared to one another as the irises of two different human eyes. Dexter was gaining speed as he soared towards the stars, but his eyes never lost broke contact in his cosmic staring contest. Each star was absolutely captivating in his eyes, but one in particular has caught his attention. While all of the other stars radiated one color, this one radiated all colors and each of the colors was composed of more colors. The star itself was pouring out beautiful music, and each streaming tentacle of paint was dancing to the song of its master.

Even if im not a writer i can tell that you have a real desire of writitng a book its really good keep it up!

Yes I agree, keep it up M4C

I'm liking it even more with the addtions, cant wait to read the next parts, if you decide to post them. I Especially liked the way you described Dexter's outer body experience,(well kinda like one) it seemed to me dexter was having a near death experience, well that's my Interpretation of it, and it was much better than tunnels with bright lights at the end of them.

Keep it up,

More additions!

Dexter was lost he often was. It’s not that he had a difficult time getting from one point to another – at least not in a geographical sense. He was clever enough to find his way around by knowing which side of the sky the sun will set on, or even how the location of a few stars could give him a pretty good idea of which direction he was walking. The problem was that Dexter’s current wanderings were through a very interesting place that no one else could ever see. It was a place where no amount of navigating by even the most seasoned of sailors would have done any good in developing pathways or maps. You see, the place where Dexter was lost was in wandering mind and he couldn’t find out exactly where it was taking him. But he certainly did not mind.
It was just past three in the morning, and Dexter was lying on a grassy hill in his backyard. This grassy hill was his favorite spot in the world because it was the only place he could go to let his restless mind go free; something about the open view into the horizon made him feel like any thought he had would be safe to roam around without fear of being labeled “crazy” or “weird”. The hill was far enough from the street that the city lights didn’t cloud the sky with their humming white glow, and the funny way the hill bent into itself made for quite a nice little bed to lie in. Dexter had rolled up one of his hooded sweatshirts underneath his head, and was quite comfortable in this little crevice. Even if he was not quite comfortable, it probably would not have mattered to him. His eyes were darting back and forth across the pitch black sky, and if anyone had been watching him they would have seen that he was totally oblivious to anything happening around him. Being the time of night that it was, an entire population of militant black bugs found it safe enough to come out and scour for food. Tonight, their preferred route was across Dexter’s left arm. They marched diligently in a perfect line, but occasionally one would stop to try a nice nibble of the flesh underneath its miniscule legs. Most people would have brushed the trespassers off the very second they invaded the arm, and then gotten up to leave because the itchy blades of grass that poked the back of their neck would have been the equivalent of ancient water torture. But this was not the case with Dexter - he didn’t care. In fact, he honestly found so much fascination in the sprinkles of light on the twilight canvas that he simply failed to notice the bugs or grass at all. He was having an out of body experience.
Many people tell terribly eerie stories of their own out of body experiences. In the strange of the night, their spirit is somehow stretched out of their physical bodies. This spirit is then free to roam places the body could never go – flying and floating throughout the person’s surroundings at its leisure. In the meantime, the physical shell it once inhabited stays sleeping in bed, unmoved but completely aware of where the soul has traveled. Sometimes the spirit goes out to spy on friends, other times it flies around for fun. One lady claims her aura was flying around watching her after she died. Her spirit floated out of her body and into the corner of a room where she could see her lifeless body on a hospital bed, surrounded by a crew of doctors and nurses trying to revive her from the sleep of death. Sadly for her, the doctors did not succeed in their endeavor. Just how this dead lady ended up telling her story to everyone afterwards is quite the mystery.- but it is likely that an expensive phone number for “Free Psychic Readings” popped up after she was finished telling this tale.
Dexter’s experience wasn’t nearly as interesting. In fact it probably wasn’t even a true “out of body” experience, because the essence of his being was trapped inside of his mind rather than zipping around the city like in the other stories. As his eyes took large bites out of the starlight, he felt almost as if he was flying higher and higher into the sky. The details of the luminary bodies came into clearer focus, and as he flew higher Dexter could see rich blues mixed into the dark black of the sky. Constellations grew larger and larger until each one broke up and separated into individual beacons of light that called out into the blackness. Surrounding each one of the stars was a wispy smoke of color that had been invisible before. The ambiance of color between each star was as unique and different when compared to one another as the irises of two different human eyes. Dexter was gaining speed as he soared towards the stars, but his eyes never broke contact in his cosmic staring contest. Each star was absolutely captivating in his eyes, but one in particular has caught his attention. While all of the other stars radiated one color, this one radiated all colors and each of the colors was composed of more colors. The star itself was pouring out beautiful music, and each glowing tentacle of paint was dancing to the song of its master. As the color-streams dashed to and fro across the surface of the Great Star, all of the surrounding sky began to look more real; so real that Dexter began to believe that the stars were not balls of gas, but living creatures who populated the sky and interacted with one another. One star would greet another star by flashing its blue glow towards it, and the other star would respond with a small series of flashes. The brightened bodies would then move closer together, eventually sharing in the surrounding energies both possessed. Strangely, as more stars began to join one another like this, the balls of light did not become larger or more powerful. Rather, they became more beautiful and their light became more focused. The focus of this light was, of course, towards the Great Star. The Great Star seemed to be calling an audience together, and a sense of anticipation filled the great auditorium where all were gathered for a spectacular event. As the crowd of celestial bodies continued to swarm into one another, and then into the audience of the Great Star, Dexter watched with his mouth wide open and his mind quite confused. He had never seen the night sky literally come to life, though now that he saw it actually doing so, it did not seem strange to him that it could. Something as vast as the universe must surely be full of mysteries, he reasoned. And he now had a front seat to one of those many mysteries being revealed. Being in the right place at the right time had never really applied to him before now.
When all of the nightlife had finally found its position around the Great Star, the strangest but most expected thing began to happen. Dexter’s rapid ascent into the sky stopped, and he came to a complete standstill. The floating he now experienced felt quite similar to that feeling you might experience after having been jumping on a trampoline for several minutes. Even after getting off of the trampoline, the whole earth still feels as if it is bouncing. It is hard to jump again, because your feet feel like they’ve been filled with concrete. And so it was with Dexter – though he knew he had stopped flying, his body still felt as if it had a great deal of velocity surrounding it. When he tried to move his legs or arms, all of the motion felt exaggerated and weighted down. At first he thought the sensation was quite cool, sort of the same feeling you might expect if you were visiting a planet with no gravity. But after several failed attempts to do simple things like scratch his nose or reposition himself in order to see better, Dexter concluded that he was much more comfortable when he was lying in the grass. At first he struggled with the claustrophobic feeling, but he soon realized there was nothing he could do and that a continued struggle would cause him to miss out on the events unfolding before him. It was quite lucky for him to pay attention to the Great Star when he did, because at that very moment the nocturnal symphony began.
The beauty of what Dexter witnessed next was very difficult for his mind to comprehend, so you can imagine that finding the right words to describe such an event will be quite difficult. But what can be said is that he immediately noticed a great silencing of all sounds. The rushing of solar winds, the curious song the Great Star sang, even the rapid beating of Dexter’s own heart all came to be silent. He had never known a silence like this before - usually one someone thinks all is quiet, he or she can still hear their own thoughts. Dexter felt quite comfortable with this serenity, and though he tried to scream out a few goofy words to see if they could be heard (they couldn’t), he didn’t risk yelling too much for fear of disrupting the events unfolding before him. The end of all distracting noises simply paved way for the entrance of new guests into the company of the stars, and it was quite fitting because these new guests entered with such flare that any noise would’ve seemed quite unfitting and disrespectful. For you see, the new guests were quite obviously wise, old planets – magnificent planets that were decorated like the richest of kings, and honored like the most beautiful of brides. Though each one of them was dripping with a deep color of blue and were being trailed by a fantastic wave of purple stardust, it was very easy to distinguish between them because of the vast array of shapes and sizes they represented. From the bottom of the horizon, a small group of three planets raced into the picture. These three planets were roughly three times the size of the stars, and each had a swirling group of three rings surrounding its outer perimeter. Dexter imagined that these planets were three Lieutenants in the army of the Great Star, and each would be full of strategies, tactics, and battle plans. Each ring, he believed, would represent decorations for acts of valor in ancient, cataclysmic battles. From the left corner of the sky, another planet lumbered through the stellar procession. This planet arrived alone, and was very large. When Dexter held his thumb up in front of his eye, he could easily cover the stars, and could just barely cover up the Great Star. But when he held up his thumb to the large planet, its edges easily surpassed the confines of his attempt at blocking it out. It was easily a thousand times bigger than the other stars, and because of this size Dexter could make out a great number of craters on the surface. Weaving in and out of the craters were layers of mountainous ridges, each jagged crescent chewed by millennia of rough winds. Continuing to let his imagination run, Dexter believed this star would be the Chief Professor to the Great Star. Its infinite age and experience in the universe would no doubt be the source of excellent histories and chronicles that would be very useful in creating detailed lineages and volumes of fascinating accounts from the beginning of time. It would tell these tales in a resonating deep voice that would be hold captive the attention of even the most difficult of pupils, and even now it held the attention of the audience as it settled to a resting place near the three smaller planets. After the large planet was still, dozens more followed into the coliseum with equal splendor and varying personalities. Planets with many revolving moons, planets with swirling gases, planets that appeared to be two spheres joined together. Each one was stunning to behold, and to describe each in detail would fill chapters with exquisite descriptions that would still offer no justice to the true sight of what Dexter was beholding.

o_0 wow, m4c, thats quite captivating. Keep it coming!