Idea about Writers Workshop

first time here and I am quite happy to hear that this will, hopefully, in the works. This is another link you might want to check out, it has mostly short stories, but the idea of them commenting, rating, and the way its organized should be somewhat of a good idea to get yours started.

[url]http://www.short-stories.co.uk/[/url]

Here's another site that uses a system similar to the ones noted above:

[URL=http://www.lastwords.com/]LastWords[/URL]

The site lets users submit their story, poem, play, etc. Other users can then rank the submission from 1 to 10 and leave their comments. The only thing I didn't see is an overall ranking.

Dennis, if you see this, do you want someone as administrator for the writing submisson section who knows and can monitor the computer code or someone to monitor and post submissions? Or both? If its more the latter, I'd volunteer to help out with that section. If you need someone who can read software code like in The Matrix though, I would be less than no help.

There is also a one to five rating system built into this forum. For example, scroll to the bottom of this page, and look at Rate This Thread and the pop-up menu under that text.

I don't know if that will work for the workshop idea, but it is worth trying to keep things internal to this site, since Dennis & Co. have put so much hard work into 3.Oh.

Tyler

[QUOTE]There is also a one to five rating system built into this forum. For example, scroll to the bottom of this page, and look at Rate This Thread and the pop-up menu under that text.[/QUOTE]

I've also been thinking about the boards as a story submission site, but mostly since any user feedback for a certain story would be listed under that story. I forgot all about the thread rating system - mostly because I have yet to use it.:eek: In addition, there are also thumbs-up and thumbs-down message icons. Although that can be a little cold.

A separate writer's section of The Cult would be a little more high profile. Maybe if they (Dennis & Co.) can't find a suitable script, they could make a section of The Cult describing the story submission idea, what to do as both a writer and reader, and then have a link to that section of the message boards.

A Stories forum, or something like that would be nice.

I like the more active nature of forums.

How about doing that but also having a section of the site where the final products are showcased?

just to add this to the bubble, i would make it clear to everyone that they should get their stuff copyright, you never know, i've had someone steal an idea from a story of mine, but since I had not put it under the copyright law, if was virtually for anyone to take it, i've learn the hard way and I assure you all it can happen.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by anyothername [/i]
[B]just to add this to the bubble, i would make it clear to everyone that they should get their stuff copyright, you never know, i've had someone steal an idea from a story of mine, but since I had not put it under the copyright law, if was virtually for anyone to take it, i've learn the hard way and I assure you all it can happen. [/B][/QUOTE]

I have never cared about people stealing my work. If it got famous I could just show the file to all my friends and know that something I wrote got big. Without me ever having to endure the state of celebrity.

thats not the point though, you're talking about being or not wishing to become a celebrity, i'm talking about my work, my idea, my words, my moment of sitting down and letting the words come to me, its a representation of me and I don't want anyone else to take it and use it for their own glory. Anyone can just copy the work and put it on a hard drive and show it off to friends, that doesn't prove anything either, whether your friends know you write or not.

I care about the money they might make off stealing my stuff

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by anyothername [/i]
[B]thats not the point though, you're talking about being or not wishing to become a celebrity, i'm talking about my work, my idea, my words, my moment of sitting down and letting the words come to me, its a representation of me and I don't want anyone else to take it and use it for their own glory. Anyone can just copy the work and put it on a hard drive and show it off to friends, that doesn't prove anything either, whether your friends know you write or not. [/B][/QUOTE]

The celebrity part is only an added bonus. Your thoughts being famous is the main part. Also if my stuff every became famous the publisher must be on some heavy drugs. Something to the equivalent of Draino and such.

Well that speaks for the both of us in terms of publication heh, I just think, if you let others take your work, your basically whoring, but thats just me. lets move on from the subject its really quite boring now.

Put it in an envelope and send it to yourself.
I like the rateyourwriting.com approach. If you want to put some
of your work on the site, you must critique and comment on
others' work.
rateyourwriting.com has a good statement on copyright, too.

Who would rate what is good and what is not?

why dont you just start a thread that you post your stuff on and everyone can just write you back with thier opinion...its doesnt have to be all fancy and shit

you mean the work that is submitted, which would be good to post or not, well I think all work should be posted and the readers will determine that.

thats what i ment.. they are trying to have a whole rating system , i'm saying just let people talk.

I just wonder if people will really read them.

i know i would.....and i'm all that really matters...... hahaha

now that's confidence hehe, lets just hope the others will do the same. How long will this take, getting this worshop set up??, I hope soon enough i've written two stories that took me a while to write, but maybe I should reread them and look over them again, you know what sucks-not having your own editor.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Ariel [/i]
[B]i know i would.....and i'm all that really matters...... hahaha [/B][/QUOTE]

What was that, i couldnt see my monitor with your ego in my way

blew up the charts

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by anyothername [/i]
[B]now that's confidence hehe, lets just hope the others will do the same. How long will this take, getting this worshop set up??, I hope soon enough i've written two stories that took me a while to write, but maybe I should reread them and look over them again, you know what sucks-not having your own editor. [/B][/QUOTE]

Well are far as the forums idea, zach could have that set up in minutes.

No rating system though, just a special forum for posting of your work.

the trick is replying to the stories it would be somewhat difficult because it would be like, well this forum, the comments would be a bit disorganized i would think.

not if everyone says in the beginning of the post what story its about .

yes but there will be different post for each story at different times that readers sometimes prefer to read comments before actually reading the story, they want to know ahead of time,sadly its just a sing of how lazy people can be, the funny thing is that I do that too, but i'm not lazy ;b, besides good conversations can pop up when everyone's thoughts on a story are ligned up, check out the sites they given here and youi'll see.

K you guys lost me, whats so disorganized about it?

i didnt but those all feel so uptight....oh well we just have diff opinions

i'm just making some points, but when you get down to it, it doesn't really matter to me.

do you write?

yes I do

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by anyothername [/i]
[B]just to add this to the bubble, i would make it clear to everyone that they should get their stuff copyright, you never know, i've had someone steal an idea from a story of mine, but since I had not put it under the copyright law, if was virtually for anyone to take it, i've learn the hard way and I assure you all it can happen. [/B][/QUOTE]The moment that you write something in any tangible manner, it is copyrighted under US law.

However, there are two important points about copyright that need to be brought up.

First, if you ever want to receive compensation (aka sue) for copyright infringement, you [i]must[/i] have your work registered with the copyright office (which costs around $30 or so per item).

Second, copyright only covers form, not content. This means that I could take all of the radical and cool ideas, concepts and character types in a copyrighted work, rewrite them (that means to use different words to say the same thing), and legally publish them as my own. For example, I could rewrite Fight Club with the same plot concepts, character types, ending, etc. All I have to do is make sure that any part of it isn't word for word. Even though it would be the "same" story, US copyright law allows for this. Of course, rewriting an entire story would take a lot of work, and that is why it would belong to the new author. Copyrights cover form, patents cover ideas. Copyrights are cheap and easy to acquire. Patents are the opposite.

For more information read: [url]http://www.loc.gov/copyright/[/url]

Hope that helps.

Tyler

[i]The above is automatically ©copyright 2003 by Project Mayhem, and may only be read while on the porch, you space monkey.[/i]

A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.....etc.

Hey there everyone! I am a new member to this site but not new to the site at all. I've been visiting this site for a good year now and I must say this is one of the best kept web pages I've come across! When I just read that there may be some sort of Writer's Workshop being created for The Cult I almost choked! I think that would be a great addition to this site, as long as it's done correctly. I wish I could contribute more to the consturction of this workshop area but my knowledge of computers is very limited when it comes to building and monitoring pages and I am also bogged down by a full time job and trying to get my own writing off the ground. Anyway, I would like to suggest whoever is trying to design this Writer's Workshop that they check out [url]www.zoetrope.com.[/url] This is Francis Ford Coppola's website for writers which I have recently become a member of. It's a really good site and well managed. I like that the site is for serious writers and not just for any hack that wants his prose to be posted for the masses to read. The premise to the site is you can post any original work you want, be in shorts, scripts, poetry, etc. but you have to read at least 5 to 10 other pieces by authors already on the site. I think this is a great method and creates a great avenue for writer's to meet and critique other's works. I just wanted to throw that idea out to you all here at The Cult.
I really hope this workshop comes to pass very soon!
Later..................

[QUOTE]... I almost choked[/QUOTE]

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Palahniuk puns...hmmmmm...that might make for an interesting thread - or one that might put me to sleep.

Well, at least we all "Survivor-ed" that first pun. Let's hope there are no more!

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by willtupper [/i]
[B]Well, at least we all "Survivor-ed" that first pun. Let's hope there are no more! [/B][/QUOTE]I'll just make note of that in my "Diary."

Tyler

Tyler, that was a choice. By that, I mean "choice" for a pun, of course. I'm out. You're the Pun Champion. Congratulations!

I'm not going to waste my time in trying to reply to the "pun" post from Private Full Metal Jacket (Private Pile may be more suiting for you). That "choke" thing was unintentional. Didn't mean to put you to sleep, although right now I would like to, perhaps by a Viet sniper. Your "quick wit" may be better put to use in helping to generate ideas for the writer's forum for this website. That's enough about this, it's too early.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Tyler [/i]
[B]The moment that you write something in any tangible manner, it is copyrighted under US law.
However, there are two important points about copyright that need to be brought up.
First, if you ever want to receive compensation (aka sue) for copyright infringement, you [i]must[/i] have your work registered with the copyright office (which costs around $30 or so per item).[/B][/QUOTE]

Man, Tyler, I am so glad you covered that and saved me the effort. Let me just add one thing. It's important, so I'll put it in bold: [B]People, I don't care what you've heard - mailing something to yourself does not guarrantee Copyright Protection. It will not stand up in any court. Don't be silly. If it's worth your time to write, it is worth protecting. If it's worth protecting, then it is worth filling out the very simple one-page form and sending in your $20.[/B]

I now return you to: The Cult > The Cult > Fan > Idea about Writers Workshop

Deca, really good point! If you didn't say it, I was going to. I did some research on copywrite laws last year as I was looking to get some work published and I saw that the cheapest way to copywrite something was to send it to yourself, but that it wouldn't hold up in court if someone decided to try and rip you off. What sucks for the starving writer are the fees you pay to protect your stuff with the possibility that nothing may happen with it! It's risky posting your stuff on the net, but nothing has happened to anything of mine yet. Does anyone have any horror stories of online posting?

Wow, Milehighmancini. I'm sorry our punnery pissed you off so much.

Flash.

Give you a sense of humor.

Flash.

Get you to lighten up a little.

Because for real, what's the point of doing it if it's not fun?

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by milehighmancini [/i]
[B] What sucks for the starving writer are the fees you pay to protect your stuff with the possibility that nothing may happen with it![/B][/QUOTE]

One work-around is to copyright several things as a collection. Several short stories combined as a single collection can be copyrighted (copywritten???) under a single fee. This saves you $$$.

Will,
FLASH
you're not Chuck,
FLASH
only one person above pissed me off,
FLASH
if you knew me you wouldn't be saying a didn't have a sense of humor, but that's probably a moot point since we'll probably never meet.
In any event, I was more pissed that the serious idea of creating some kind of workshop was just lost in the punnery, as you call it.
FLASH
that's it.

Finally!! Someone actually interested in this workshop! Ferg, have you tried the zoetrope.com website? It's a really good spot for all types of writer's and the members actually give honest feedback and not just garbage one line responses. It's pretty good. The only thing with that site is that it's very time consuming in that you have to read and crititque a bunch of other work that's already up on the site before you can see replies to your own work. It's worth it though if you're looking for opinions about your work.

A milehigh, i was checking out that site you mention but how can I check other poeples work, I want to read some of them but I have no idea as to where the main room for writers is, all I keep finding is workshops for writers.

anyothername....you're talking about zoetrope.com right? Did you register yourself on the site? That's the first step to being able to read the works up on that site. After that (the site is set up rather weird) you have to enter a "building". There are red tabs towards the top of the page that say "writer's building" and "directing building" and "actor's building" so on and so on. Go into the "writer's building" and subsections pop up for you to select what you want to read (short stories, poetry, scripts, etc). Once you're through all that, then you can select what you want to read. Once you're in there, it's cool because there are short description of the stories, word count, and sometimes author bios (if the author entered for themselves). I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other trouble with it. Look for my stuff!! It may still be on there somewhere! I have work under poetry, short stories, and short scripts.

I also would like to see this workshop take shape on this particular board. Same reasons as FergHova, I've got a huge project that I would like to share and get some feedback on. I'm a terrible pessimist and not very interested in ragging on others, so my input would probably be evil. But that could be positive, I guess.

yeah milehigh, i was talking about that site you mentioned. I'll be signing up soon, i've been away for a while because i'm totally down on inspiration and I needed to take a break from reading sooo many stories, you can get lost doing that because when you read something, you're inspired by that author and then your writing sounds pretty much like them, i hate sounding, copying, writing anything close to any big author because its unoriginal.

I think it's a pretty kick ass idea. The thing with those other sites is you have to read a bunch of other people's stories first, and they most likely suck. Or at least they're just not your cup of tea. Everyone raves about Ian McEwan and I picked up one of his books and I just don't care for his prose. Now a Cult writer's workshop, the stories would probably be Chuck influenced.