Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with story

ID this WWII/Holocaust story

Johnny Assay — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:08:37 -0800

Identify the source of this story: A Jew living in Germany (or Eastern Europe) in the late 1930s sees that the situation is turning bad, and decides to flee the country. He tries to convince his parents to come with him, but they refuse to be uprooted. A few years later, in the new country, he receives a telegram from his father reading simply "You were right." He never sees his parents again. For some reason this story popped into my head this morning, and I can't remember its context. I don't even know if it's fictional or factual. Does it sound familiar to anyone?

let's NOT do goldilocks, for once.

acidic — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:26:11 -0800

Help me, a teacher, help my energetic, funny and amazing 10-year-old EFL students write and direct a pair of plays. I've been put in charge of a drama club at my school in Korea. We've got 4 weeks to brainstorm, write, rehearse, and film two plays. I have six students, and while they will each act in both plays, they will be written by groups of three. We did some brainstorming and we came up with the following ideas:
1) A crew of superheroes and magical people who have lost their powers-- a comedy
2) A normal school populated by a group of scary people (zombies, ghosts, etc)
but these aren't set in stone. They're a VERY, VERY active group of kids-- at any given moment usually four of them are jumping on their desks. They wanted to do a fighting play (with fake guns?) but I wasn't sure if that was appropriate.

Their English is not strong, so I'm planning to write a plot and help them develop it into a simple script. Trouble is, I know next to nothing about creative writing (especially for children), and I have never really been involved in anything dramatic. How do I develop these ideas into storylines that use all 6 students equally? How long should the script be if we're to tackle it in a month? We have fifteen 40-minute sessions, and the kids are quite hard to control.

(I'm not NECESSARILY asking for you to come up with a brief storyline, but if anything cool comes to mind......)

I need some advice about publishing my story.

Salvor Hardin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:04:57 -0800

Hive authors: help me publish a sci-fi story! I've written a science fiction short story (hard sci-fi). I've been told that it's pretty good, so I was thinking about trying to publish it in a periodical of some kind for the fun of it. It's a little over 5000 words. I've never done this before, and I don't read sci-fi magazines very often, so I'm looking for the following:

Suggestions on where to send in the story. How many places?

Warnings, things I should know beforehand or avoid. I'm clueless about copyright, etc.

Estimates of whether or not I can get any money from this. It'd be fine if I didn't, but I'd like to know going in.

Any other advice.

Thanks!

I'm sure about the songs from under the sand.

ricochet biscuit — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:23:44 -0800

Again with the "identify this short story." Science fiction story I read at least ten years ago, in which the consciousness -- but not the body -- of a twentieth/twenty-first-century man is revived far into the future by -- I think -- aliens (or possibly our distant descendants). Told if not in the first person then at least from the point of view of the revived consciousness. They interview him for research purposes but he proves difficult or antagonistic or something, so they eventually just shut his sensory inputs off and leave him to go mad. By the end he is hallucinating that he is on a beach while songs are being chanted to him from beneath the green sands.

Name this scifi story about highways of the future

chrisamiller — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:09:15 -0800

Looking for a short sci-fi story that I read on the internet. It was about a police force who worked in the very risky highways of the future, where rocket cars zoomed around at hundreds of miles an hour. Other half-remembered details:

- The protagonists drove in a huge vehicle with three or four personnel, including drivers and a medic

- Traffic was heavy at one point because people were returning to Ohio from a football game in California

- it started snowing at another point in the story

- The highway was several lanes wide and contained differential speeds: 400 mph in the left tube, 300 mph in the middle, etc.

I can't even remember if it was a particularly good story, but I stumbled across it several years back and would like to read through it again. Thanks.

Making sweet music in fiction?

motsque — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:48:08 -0800

What's your favorite online fiction site, and did you find what I'm looking for? I found some great resources here, here, and here. Now I'm in a time crunch and hope that you can recommend the best short story or novella you've read about or involving music or musical characters (by which I mean gifted with musical talent, not singing princesses or anything). HUGE BONUS if it's online. Thanks!!

If you say someone's funny are they doomed to failure?

Navelgazer — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:06:20 -0800

Are there any examples of stories where a character is depicted as super-funny, and that actually comes through in practice? Oftentimes, in movies and plays and tv shows, the story will involve one character's skills being trumpeted. Now, if this skill is something like ass-kicking or hacking or janitorial equation-solving, that's easy enough to show off when the script requires it. Sometimes, though, the story will require the creator to summon the same degree of artistic skill that is ascribed to the character, which is where this gets dicey and obviously, quite risky.

Sometimes the risk pays off. In Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, the song "Good Thing Going" is endlessly promoted as just the best thing you've ever heard, but Sondheim backs it up with an actually achingly beautiful song. In The West Wing, Toby and Sam are frequently touted as amazing writers, but Sorkin actually shows us the soaring, idealistic speeches they make, and they are, indeed, pretty awesome.

Where this always seems to fail, however, is with comedy. When Sorkin tried to do the same thing on Studio 60 with comedy writers, for instance, it became the primary reason for the show's quick demise, because none of the viewers agreed. The same is true for such misbegotten projects as Man of the Year and Mr. Saturday Night. I haven't yet seen Funny People, so maybe that's the exception to this, but my question is: are there any examples of fictional movies about supposedly great comedians/comediennes where the character in question is actually, you know, funny with their act? If so, which ones? If not, why not?

PS3 franchises with story but little backstory?

Riki tiki — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:01:21 -0800

What video game franchises in the current generation would be good to pick up for the first time? I like games with a decent focus on story or lore. I just bought a PS3 and am looking to build up my library a bit. Problem is, I look around and see a lot of those types of games with large numbers at the end of their titles... Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4. Not having played the earlier titles in these series, I'm hesitant to buy them for fear that the plot will make little to no sense to me or that I'll end up with a cruddy cash-in sequel that only appeals to people who had their minds blown by the early entries.

Which franchises justify that fear and which don't? Of the ones that have a rolling storyline, do the earlier games hold up well enough to be worth playing now (and would I be able to play them on a new PS3)?

The above were just examples, I'm open to any other franchises you can think of. Also feel free to assume a fairly loose definition of "story", I just mean it to exclude franchises where the plot is just a flimsy framework to justify the gameplay, like Street Fighter.

(also no need to talk about the following: Fallout 3, Oblivion, GTAIV, or the Final Fantasy series)

Faceless Nuns in Childrens Book

will wait 4 tanjents — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:35:57 -0800

Looking for a circa late 70's early 80's Children's Picture Book with faceless nuns. Hoping someone in the MeFi shared my same crazed childhood where aunts gave books for Christmas every.year They were a team that went on adventures - they did not look creepy, but they were facial featureless.
I have been searching for years.

The books I had were hard cover and possibly published through Scholastic.. but I cannot be sure.

And YES I have asked my aunt.

Name that SF story -- traffic jam edition.

escabeche — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:44:00 -0800

Identify a science fiction story about a giant, unfixable traffic jam. (spoilers inside.) Here's what I remember: story set in the near future. There's a massive traffic jam, I'm pretty sure in Los Angeles. The story takes place over the course of days and weeks as the residents of the jam find ways to fend for themselves. At some point there's a gag that the whole jam was started by a "little old lady from Pasadena." The story ends with helicopters or planes flying over the traffic jam, dumping wet cement on cars and people alike in order to form a new highway over the old. I would have read this in the very late 1970s or early 1980s, probably in OMNI, but possibly in an anthology. Any ideas?

Help me find my moon story!

mahke — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:18:50 -0800

Please help me find this SciFi story I remember reading as a kid. This is what I remember - unfortunately I can't remember if it was an extended short story or a novel (I read it in school, about 20-25 years ago!).

This is what I do remember:

* the setting is the moon, where a colony live in an air-tight dome
* two friends steal a moon buggy to go for a joy ride
* the end up crashing into/through a crater, and discover a hidden pocket of oxygen in which they can breathe, and in which vegetation/flowers etc have thrived

Not sure what else happens to be honest, but hopefully that's enough to go on!

Underground, overground...

Artw — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:16:09 -0800

Half remembered short story identification filter: A story in which scientists discover grids underground which might be the cities of beings who live at a greater density, and then at the end scientists from the underground city are looking through the documents, having wiped out humanity accidentally just by coming to the surface.

Brought to you by the Nilbog Chamber of Commerce

Countess Elena — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:09:30 -0800

Inspired by a recent question about the Seven Basic Plots and so forth: Can you tell me what the origin of the "Creepy Little Town" or "Something's Not Right Here" story type is? I'm wondering if it's a uniquely American trope in origin. It's about a town that preserves a surface normality, sometimes total and saccharine, sometimes odd and off-kilter. A traveler, a former resident, or a suspicious outsider inside the town detects that something is strange and soon discovers a big old vat of hidden evil. All the townspeople are complicit, either because they're frightened, they're deluded, or they too are evil.

Salem's Lot is a good example, and I'm certain Stephen King wrote plenty of others along the same line; The Stepford Wives is a different kind. The Wicker Man is also a classic (of course it isn't an American movie, at least not the good one from the '70s). Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is another. (I wouldn't exactly count the "Seven Samurai" or "Shane" type of plot, in which there is a powerful enemy that controls the town, but there is not supposed to be anything wrong with the whole place.)

I am interested to know how old this type of story is, and where, if anyone knows, its earliest examples came from.

SAY MY NAME!

Bageena — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:04:45 -0800

Simple Mefi, simple! I just want to buy a replica of the Orin from the 80's fantasy film The Neverending Story. I'd like a nice one, but at this point.... Thus continuing my epic quest to ask Metafilter to provide me with things that simply don't exist (see my last question where I asked for an apparently very rare version of The Jerk), I really, really want a nice, high-quality replica of the Orin from The Neverending Story. You know, the little symbol of the two snakes biting one another found on the book Bastion steals from the book store. Help me Mefi, help me.

(I still haven't found that copy of The Jerk either)

Help me remember a story about a many making lots of money dry cleaning.

Hates_ — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:07:39 -0800

Recently I read a story that went along the lines of a man who offered to do a company's dry cleaning for $10, which they paid. Then the next week he charged $20 and they paid. Eventually he was charging loads for their dry cleaning. I can't for the life of me recall who the company was or where I even read about it. Does anyone have any info or perhaps recall reading the same story recently?

City of Light

diode — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:54:51 -0800

SF short story filter: I read this sci-fi short story a long time ago. It's fairly memorable...I'm hoping someone on AskMeFi knows of it. Here's the synopsis.
The story begins with the protagonist attempting to enter a distant city, an alien one on our planet. The aliens have destroyed civilization and planted their cities on the planet in various places.
In the first passage, the hero is attempting to cross a field guarded by a floating energy being. Another traveler warns him the only way to get across is to move in a haphazard fashion with no particular pattern to his movement. He gets across safely and into the city.
Here's where it gets interesting. The city is composed of what I remember being described as solidified light that is responsive to concentrated will or focus. Our hero takes up residence and meets other humans living there who have pretty much the same status as rats in a human city.
The humans are generally ignored by the aliens who seem to be composed of complex energy patterns and have no point of reference for communication with earth folks.
Over time the hero learns to manipulate the alien city's light substance and performs various tricks like creating a sled through mental control that whisks him through the city at one point.
Finally, he learns the secret of the aliens is that when you can form circles of certain colors of the solid light energy and pass one inside the other, energy is emitted. The suggestion at close is that the hero has found a way for humanity to win back control of the planet.
I'd love to find and read this short story again.

Bedtime stories

Anonymous — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:13:01 -0800

Find me stories (books, movies, links, anecdotes) of how two ordinary, quiet, straight middle-aged people met, and learned to care for each other. I like to fantasise before I go to sleep. I build the fantasies gradually up into romantic/sexual masturbatorial aid. Romance novels are crap for this because they have gorgeous young heroines with an uncanny ability to flirt and young Fabios eager to engage in rigorous and prolonged intercourse with them. They are not helpful in with my fantasy construction - I have to be able to imagine me in the story, and I am not gorgeous nor young nor can I flirt. However, I’ve worn out old memories & scenarios and need new vanilla-ish ones.

Good examples are from the first kiss thread excepting of course, that I’m a couple of decades (or more) past first kiss, so those precise scenarios won’t ring true for me. The guy helping out with the car and the hot chocolate here sounds like an ideal candidate, but I’d like a bit more padding to the story, like when & how does he approach their first night together sort of thing.

I’m introverted, so plain old fashioned dating is not a tranquil fantasy setting for me. Instead, how about enforced togetherness (snowed into a cabin, hostage situation, I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking) where I can impress with trivia, and active listening, but not be on dating display and he can snuggle with impunity (must cuddle to stay warm, needs to support my impressive gunshot wound, that sort of thing). My hero needn’t be a rich man or particularly fit, he mostly needs intelligence and kindness, and that will make him hot to me, and of course, it helps if he finds geeky, creative women sexy, even if they are over 40 and not girly-girly.

So stories please of ordinary, quiet, straight middle-aged couples meeting and lusting. Throwaway email: fantasy.enhancement@gmail.com

Missing Love Story Sandman

wavejumper — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:13:53 -0800

I'm reading the Sandman comic collections for the first time. It seems to me there's a missing love story for Morpheus. Help me locate it!? It's alluded to in Book 6, Fables and Reflections, in the story "A Parliament of Rooks," when Matthew the Raven, responding to Eve's queries about Morpheus, says, "They've been pretty inseparable for the last few weeks...going for long walks hand in hand..."

But then by the beginning of Book 7, Brief Lives, Morpheus has apparently broken up with her whoever she was (a mortal?) and is very depressed & gloomy, making it rain for weeks, etc. Part of his motivation to go hunt down his brother, supposedly.

Is there more to it than this? Am I missing a comic here or there or is all that is extant? Any information anyone has on the "missing love" story would be much appreciated.

Farmer Junco story

Blackwatch — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:40:00 -0800

Seeking Richard Scarry book containing 'Farmer Junco' story. As a child, my wife loved the story of 'Farmer Junco' which was in a collection of stories by Richard Scarry.

Now that we have a child of our own, I'd love to track down a copy of the book.

Can anyone tell me which book contains the Farmer Junco story?

(This follows an earlier question: http://ask.metafilter.com/118732/Desperately-seeking-Farmer-Junkle
which was posted before a discovered the story was written by Richard Scarry.)

Many thanks.

DIY audiobooks

glider — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:37:47 -0800

I do lengthy reading to my daughter (6) every evening, and it's a valuable part of our day. Later this summer, she's going to be visiting her mother for a few weeks, which means no reading. I'd like to send her on this trip with some CDs or a memory stick full of pre-recorded stories, so I have a couple quick questions as to how to best accomplish this. I'm looking for the best SIMPLE software that can record long passages from the mic, with some sort of on-screen feedback so I know it's working. I realize there are a zillion audio tools, so from my point of view, the easier and more single-purpose the better.

In addition, since I will surely make numerous "vocal typos", I'd like to have a solution that either let's me "tag" the clip by pressing a key so I can go back and fix it later without having to search (or remember) for the problem... Alternately perhaps I'm complicating things -- I suppose software that lets me easily stop and start a new clip and then I can patch them together later, knowing that there's a problem at the very end of all clips.

Oh, and I'm using Windows.

Stuffed crocodiles hanging from the ceiling?

krisjohn — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:08:20 -0800

For a friend: Looking for a story, or possibly book, or possibly series of books. The only thing they remember is that at one point the protagonist(s) visit a wizard or magician for help. He has a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. Quoted from their LJ:

For the past couple of weeks I've been vaguely remembering a story, or possibly book, or possibly series of books I read as a young child. The only thing I remember is that at one point the protagonist(s) visit a wizard or magician for help.

He has a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling, as all good wizard/magicians have stuffed crocodiles hanging from the rafters.

I think at one point they returned, and the child rushes to see the crocodile, but it's gone, and the wizard says something along the lines of "all things must pass, even stuffed crocodiles".

So I've always had a bit set that your good magician must always have a stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling. And other writers have clearly read the same book, Pratchett and Gaimon and so forth, it must be a classic...and apparently alchemists have it too!

So I've been vaguely trying to remember the book.

Things have come to a head, because, now in the Mansion of E the last couple of strips have featured a wizard/alchemist like character who has a stuffed crocogater hanging from his ceiling.

So I did a google search, thinking this would be a relatively easy find. No. Everyone seems to have been affected. Hell's budgies! There's even a cult! Everyone is talking about stuffed, ceiling hung crocs!

And apparently the childhood author I'm thinking of might have been affected by T H White with Merlin's corkindrill hanging from the rafters. Or with alchemists. And so, apparently has everyone else, or they've been affected by this childhood author.

Okay. What would this children's book I read have been? Any ideas? Where have you read of stuffed crocodiles hanging from the ceiling/rafters?

Thank you!

Storytelling Grandfather - Author?

CarolynAMW — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:15:21 -0800

Can anyone identify a short story or teleplay with the following plot or some variant thereof: A grandfather frequently tells his grandchildren about his experiences in the Revolutionary War, pointing to a general's portrait hanging over his fireplace as he sits in his rocking chair. He has one favorite grandson, who grows tired of the grandfather's story. The grandson researches and finds that the general in the portrait is not so brave as the grandfather makes him out to be. During the next telling of the story, the grandson interrupts his grandfather and corrects him with the truth -- whereupon the grandfather takes down the portrait and never tells the story again. Years later, as an old man himself, the grandson is sitting in the same rocking chair, surrounded by his grandchildren, goes to tell the story, looks up to the blank space above the fireplace, is filled with a profound sense of loss/regret, and falls silent.

A friend in Israel said he thinks he once saw this on American television. I could only offer the similar story -- but with a very different moral -- in "The Four Feathers," where Harry Faversham "heroically" corrects the old general's embroidered account of the Battle of Balaclava. Hawthorne has a book of stories on a grandfather's chair, but nothing like this. I also tried Washington Irving and Benet -- no luck.

Screenplay editing formats

cascando — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:07:30 -0800

Screenplay editing/ Script Development question. A friend has sent me a copy of his screenplay and is asking for some notes/ story editing commments. I have some questions about the style and format. Please see inside.... I have a copy of the screenplay. What is the standard format for writing my notes on it? Do I work in a Word document, and just write Page 2, Character development issues, Page 3... not enough conflict // protagonist and mother in law etc ... Does anyone have an idea in regards to how this is usually done? Is this done usually page by page, or is it more of a several page general summary of the script and its problems ? Is there a software program that helps? Is there anywhere on the internet or a book that I can see how a screenplay development thing is formatted? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Submit story just before deadline?

uans — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:10:41 -0800

I would like to submit a short story to literary journals whose reading period ends April 30. Obviously, they will receive the story just before deadline. Am I wasting my time and opportunity doing this? Should I wait until the submission period reopens, usually September or October?

Based on a true story...sorta

Oriole Adams — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:20:46 -0800

Screenplay filter: Legal ramifications regarding "based on a true story" or "ripped from the headlines" films. I've got a few publishing credits under my belt (non-fiction books, some reference, some trivia-related), but I'm itching to combine two of my personal guilty pleasures - true crime and Lifetime-style movies - in an effort to branch out into screenplay writing. I grew up watching the various network "Movies of the Week", and Lifetime original movies have helped to fill that "ripped from the headlines" void in recent years. I've got a couple of crime stories I'm working on in this regard, but I'm wondering if, even if I change the names of the victims and the location, do I need to get any sort of special permissions before submitting the screenplay? For example, if I was presenting the story of the Texas Yogurt Shop Murders, and I changed the locale to an ice cream store in a different state and used different names for the victims and perps, could I still A) present it as "based on a true story" and B) not be sued by the families of the actual victims for using their story without permission? (This point is probably iffy in any situation, considering the litigious climate in the US.)

Perhaps this all boils down to how much can you change a story in order to prevent charges of plagiarism or exploitation, while still selling it as a "true story"? What if I use several intricate details of a scenario that only the actual person involved would know? For example, can I use the description of an airline hijacking given by a survivor who recounted their story in an interview if put it in my own words and change the names/places? There must be some sort of industry standard, since so many TV films are based on true stories, but I don't know what, if any, permissions are necessary, or how much attribution must be given when submitting the screenplay, etc. (I know that if I get a "bite" once I submit a screenplay I'll need to lawyer up, but I want to sort of be informed a bit in advance as much as possible.)