Two Writing Exercises Posted and the Random Title Generator 2022 January 9

I haven’t been very energetic and productive of late, but I did post a couple writing exercise and work on random title generator.

“The Magnificent River”

Paul wants to see Laura, who is on the opposite side the magnificent river.

This was an exercise I wrote last year. I revised it and posted the text on my website back then. It has haunted me since then, so I decided I should do a recording.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-magnificent-river

·         https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/stories/the-magnificent-river/

"The Princess and The Elated Tax Collector"

The princess does not want to pay her taxes. The tax collector has other ideas.

Our script group did a writing exercise at our meeting this week. Later in the week I recorded and posted it.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-princess-and-the-elated-tax-collector

Random Title Generator

https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/random-title-generator/

I did more work on my random title generator this week. There are two things I want to accomplish for my next release.

My first goal is to expand the options for titles. Currently, the titles are set up with just people as the main noun in the title. I wanted to allow things as the main noun. While I was at it, I expanded the number of articles and adjectives.

I’m not sure the term article is what I should be using, since that usually applies to words “the” and “a.” For example, my articles list includes: “The Strange Tale of a,” “Ask Me About a,” and “Out of the Mist Came the.” I wouldn’t describe these as articles, but I haven’t come up with a more appropriate word.

I also realized that not all of the articles and adjectives made sense for both people and things, so I split them into three groups. The first group made sense for both things and people. The second group made sense for people and not things. The third group made sense for things, but not people. This does complicate the set up of the web page.

The existing title generations can create around 233,000,000 unique titles. If I ever finish the revised version, it will be able to create around 811,000,000 unique titles. Of course, as I noted on the page itself, not all of these will make sense.

My other goal was to display all of the titles that random title generator produced during a session. A major user of the generator suggested that this would be helpful. I had looked into this before, but I was thinking in terms of having a back key that would recall earlier titles. I couldn’t figure out how to do this. I am by no means a Java power user.

However, I realized that setting up the code to display all of the earlier titles would be easier to do. I've been trying to find out how to do that. I haven’t found any examples of code that does this. I looked at on-line Java documentation, but I found it a bit opaque. I can glean enough to realize that it can be done. That doesn’t mean I can do it.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

“Playing a Trick on an Odd Electrician” Posted

I posted another writing exercise on SoundCloud based on the random title: “Playing a Trick on an Odd Electrician”. An old man who thinks he has a sense of humor decides to play a trick on an electrician.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/playing-a-trick-on-an-odd-electrician-edited

This time we did the writing exercises during our script writer’s group meeting. We haven’t done that for a while. I finished up early, so this one is a bit on the shorter side of what I normally write.

The “old man” in the story isn’t entirely autobiographical. I don’t claim to be funny. Some people might even say that my sense of humour as a joke. Calling the electrician odd is debatable. I can see that some people would see the electrician as perfectly normal. I suppose that if I’d had more time to contemplate the story before I wrote it, I would have come up with someone more objectively odd.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

“The Lover and the Chivalrous Paladin” and the Older Filmmakers Club

I posted my recording of a new writing exercise. The Older Filmmakers Club is starting to come together.

“The Lover and the Chivalrous Paladin”

Sir Robert de Rockfort takes on a dangerous assignment to please the woman he loves, Lady Delfinia.

I wasn't all that keen on the title, but inspiration came, and I ended up with one of my longer pieces. I ran over my self imposed 30-minute time limit. I’m not sure by how much. Not more than 5 to 10 minutes. I did follow my rule to do no revision.

The biggest problem with the recording was that I had trouble pronouncing Chivalrous. I tried several times to get it right. I used an on-line dictionary to play the word, but it didn’t help much.

·         https://soundcloud.com/dynamiclethargy/the-lover-and-the-chivalrous-paladin

This exercise doesn’t lend itself to making a short video the same way some of my other writing exercises do. Speaking of which, I’ve only done one video based on my writing exercises so far. I did start on a second video but didn’t finish it. My goal is to get another one or two done by the end of the year.

Older Filmmakers Club

The Older Filmmakers Club made some progress over the last couple of weeks. The Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers has supplied a lot of support to make it happen. They set up a channel on their SLACK workspace for the club. We have a about a dozen members now and they have started to share their goals and ideas on the SLACK channel. Some time in the new year we will start to have some on-line meetings. We hope that it won’t be too long before we can start to meet in person.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog