Tag Archives: grammer

Vessel

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VesselVessel by Andrew J. Morgan
★★☆☆☆
A strange vessel floats in orbit with the International Space Station. Things go into overdrive when communications with the station is lost. Sally Fisher, a SETI scientist and communications expert, is sent on an emergency mission to the space station to trouble shoot the problems. Meanwhile, on the ground, a feisty reporter, Sean Jacob, gets a tip that something isn’t quite right with ISS and starts to dig in places he shouldn’t. The reader is taken on a ride through this thriller with a great twist at the end.

Vessel, by Andrew Morgan, is a great story that is severely hurt by poor editing. It is one of those books that I’m frustrated that it made it to me (and all of the author’s fans) before it was fully edited. A good editor would have taken this adjective riddled story and tightened it into a great thriller that would have put me on the edge. Unfortunately, I had to drag myself through the wordy quagmire to get to the end.

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Thought Verbs by; Chuck Palahniuk

I found this post by way of another post via another post (amazing how these things work).  Chuck Palahniuk makes a challenge to fellow writers to drop certain words from their writing vocabulary and I, for one, am going to take him up on that challenge.

Anyone care to join me?

Below is a sentence up that break’s “The Rules of Chuck” (as I have decided to call them).  Your challenge is to create of the perfect way to write the sentence following “The Rules of Chuck.” Write several sentences, or even a paragraph. Get creative!

  • You must read the article (link at the top of this post)
  • You must follow “The Rules of Chuck.”
  • It must be rated PG (yes folks, I’m a bit of a prude)
  • This will be open for comments forever (or until the post gets lost in the past).

Here’s the prompt:

  • While playing pool with friends, Mary thought about Jake .

Here is a short list of just a few of the words mentioned by Mr. Palahniuk:

  • Thinks
  • Knows
  • Understands
  • Realizes
  • Believes
  • Wants
  • Remembers
  • Imagines
  • Desires
  • Is
  • Has
  • Wonders

The list can go on and on, but you have a few of the disallowed word choices.  So, read the article about Thought Verbs and come back and face the challenge.  This is a great place to practice.