|
Post by whiskeybrewer on Mar 21, 2019 14:50:13 GMT
And the initial developer of Andromeda, bless him. One of the big influences on my writing when I was starting out. Man knows how to make an engaging story. and his DS9 stuff is fantastic too. I really want him to write for Who
|
|
|
Post by selimpensfiction on Mar 27, 2019 20:07:49 GMT
Let me just randomly leave this here. A while ago I wrote about things you can't say when you're writing Doctor Who. Let's add a "cannot-do" to that list. You can't have characters smoking. At all. Even if it's a period piece set in a time when many people smoked.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2019 9:23:48 GMT
Let me just randomly leave this here. A while ago I wrote about things you can't say when you're writing Doctor Who. Let's add a "cannot-do" to that list. You can't have characters smoking. At all. Even if it's a period piece set in a time when many people smoked. As a writer who doesn't smoke (and never will), I wholeheartedly agree.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2019 9:35:26 GMT
Let me just randomly leave this here. A while ago I wrote about things you can't say when you're writing Doctor Who. Let's add a "cannot-do" to that list. You can't have characters smoking. At all. Even if it's a period piece set in a time when many people smoked. & no drinking alcohol either.
|
|
|
Post by Bazoolium on Mar 31, 2019 12:00:49 GMT
Let me just randomly leave this here. A while ago I wrote about things you can't say when you're writing Doctor Who. Let's add a "cannot-do" to that list. You can't have characters smoking. At all. Even if it's a period piece set in a time when many people smoked. & no drinking alcohol either. 3rd Doctor drank wine. We've seen Amy and Rory drinking. Jago and Litefoot went to the pub all the time.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2019 12:37:47 GMT
& no drinking alcohol either. 3rd Doctor drank wine. We've seen Any and Rory drinking. Jago and Litefoot went to the pub all the time. Yep. But it is a social drug like smoking so same rule should apply.
|
|
|
Post by number13 on Mar 31, 2019 14:26:00 GMT
& no drinking alcohol either. 3rd Doctor drank wine. We've seen Amy and Rory drinking. Jago and Litefoot went to the pub all the time. The Third Doctor drank only the best wine and lifted it from Styles' cellar while he was away... (How's that for a moral message? )
Qute right about J&L too, Henry could (I suspect) outdrink a fish if he wanted, the Prof. was more restrained but enjoyed a glass with his friends.
And many more - they were drinking wine in ancient Rome and something in the 'Inferno' club in Swinging London, Tegan enjoyed a Screwdriver in the '20s, the Doctor with Steven and Dodo (underage drinking there!!) wished us all 'a very Merry Christmas' with glass in hand, etc., etc.
But I think the Doctor personally may not have drunk alcohol after his Third regeneration? Unless I've forgotten some occasion, or that carrot juice was fermented.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2019 0:07:01 GMT
3rd Doctor drank wine. We've seen Amy and Rory drinking. Jago and Litefoot went to the pub all the time. The Third Doctor drank only the best wine and lifted it from Styles' cellar while he was away... (How's that for a moral message? )
Qute right about J&L too, Henry could (I suspect) outdrink a fish if he wanted, the Prof. was more restrained but enjoyed a glass with his friends.
And many more - they were drinking wine in ancient Rome and something in the 'Inferno' club in Swinging London, Tegan enjoyed a Screwdriver in the '20s, the Doctor with Steven and Dodo (underage drinking there!!) wished us all 'a very Merry Christmas' with glass in hand, etc., etc.
But I think the Doctor personally may not have drunk alcohol after his Third regeneration? Unless I've forgotten some occasion, or that carrot juice was fermented.
The Fourth Doctor and Romana tried some wine in State of Decay as well.
They're known to indulge a bit here and there in the expanded universe. It's rare to see him drink beer, but wine does pop up from time-to time. Time Lord physiology is such that he can only get drunk if he wishes, so it tends to be in moderation. Unless for comedic effect. Year of the Pig, for example, has the Sixth Doctor get sozzled and shout at Marcel Proust (much to his own horror and embarrassment). Drinking, yes. Drunkedness, tends to be a fairly rare occurrence. Ironically, for all the drinking Bernice does, I don't think her and Seven ever drank together.
On the subject of smoking, the First Doctor briefly smoked a pipe in An Unearthly Child and the Fourth has a hookah in the TARDIS, circa The Deadly Assassin. The former is brought up once, then never again, which leads me to suspect that the Doctor quit cold turkey after it nearly got him killed. The latter is harder to explain, but it's likely a relic from that earlier period. The image of the Doctor smoking feels odd in any case. A lot of smoking turns up in The Wormery, but aside from providing a light, he keeps well clear.
|
|
|
Post by number13 on Apr 1, 2019 1:11:01 GMT
The Third Doctor drank only the best wine and lifted it from Styles' cellar while he was away... (How's that for a moral message? )
Qute right about J&L too, Henry could (I suspect) outdrink a fish if he wanted, the Prof. was more restrained but enjoyed a glass with his friends.
And many more - they were drinking wine in ancient Rome and something in the 'Inferno' club in Swinging London, Tegan enjoyed a Screwdriver in the '20s, the Doctor with Steven and Dodo (underage drinking there!!) wished us all 'a very Merry Christmas' with glass in hand, etc., etc.
But I think the Doctor personally may not have drunk alcohol after his Third regeneration? Unless I've forgotten some occasion, or that carrot juice was fermented.
The Fourth Doctor and Romana tried some wine in State of Decay as well.
They're known to indulge a bit here and there in the expanded universe. It's rare to see him drink beer, but wine does pop up from time-to time. Time Lord physiology is such that he can only get drunk if he wishes, so it tends to be in moderation. Unless for comedic effect. Year of the Pig, for example, has the Sixth Doctor get sozzled and shout at Marcel Proust (much to his own horror and embarrassment). Drinking, yes. Drunkedness, tends to be a fairly rare occurrence. Ironically, for all the drinking Bernice does, I don't think her and Seven ever drank together.
On the subject of smoking, the First Doctor briefly smoked a pipe in An Unearthly Child and the Fourth has a hookah in the TARDIS, circa The Deadly Assassin. The former is brought up once, then never again, which leads me to suspect that the Doctor quit cold turkey after it nearly got him killed. The latter is harder to explain, but it's likely a relic from that earlier period. The image of the Doctor smoking feels odd in any case. A lot of smoking turns up in The Wormery, but aside from providing a light, he keeps well clear.
Hmm... "Bull's Blood" was the choice of their hosts and I wouldn't put it past them to have meant it literally...
Oh well, if we're including characters from the expanded universe we have my favourite Trans-Temporal Dissolute Adventuress, Iris 'Splishy-Splashy' Wildthyme, who once nearly ended the world with a misplaced G&T
I never touch the stuff myself but I've no objection to storylines which do, in a tasteful or funny way. (Unlike 'Exile' or 'The Dark Husband', which did neither imo!)
|
|
|
Post by J.A. Prentice on Apr 1, 2019 6:10:58 GMT
The fourth Doctor spends a good part of Scratchman trying to get ginger beer. Given Kingmaker, this suggests he might have a serious problem.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2019 8:56:29 GMT
The fourth Doctor spends a good part of Scratchman trying to get ginger beer. Given Kingmaker, this suggests he might have a serious problem. "Ahh, but ginger beer is popularly a non-alcoholic fizzy drink," he'd say with his magnetic eyes. "Rather good for an upset stomach. The ginger root, you see, acts as a natural remedy and I do so like the bubbles." A true fact, apparently (in opposition to eureka being Greek for "This bath is too hot." ). It's sometimes used to soothe nausea, which ends up being an interesting bit of subtext for Scratchman. I've likewise no objection to reading it in Who; I don't drink, nor smoke. I don't even drink coffee, tea is my preferred vice. Good tea, preferably looseleaf, but a paper teabag is also fine. Never plastic, you can taste it.
|
|
|
Post by number13 on Apr 2, 2019 1:04:11 GMT
The fourth Doctor spends a good part of Scratchman trying to get ginger beer. Given Kingmaker, this suggests he might have a serious problem. "Ahh, but ginger beer is popularly a non-alcoholic fizzy drink," he'd say with his magnetic eyes. "Rather good for an upset stomach. The ginger root, you see, acts as a natural remedy and I do so like the bubbles." A true fact, apparently (in opposition to eureka being Greek for "This bath is too hot." ). It's sometimes used to soothe nausea, which ends up being an interesting bit of subtext for Scratchman. I've likewise no objection to reading it in Who; I don't drink, nor smoke. I don't even drink coffee, tea is my preferred vice. Good tea, preferably looseleaf, but a paper teabag is also fine. Never plastic, you can taste it. Agree! Drink it in the lab from a UNIT mug. Drink it with yak butter in a Tibetan monastery. Drink it in Mrs. Higgins' kitchen with a pink wafer biscuit. Drink it before it goes cold, somewhere else.
Tea - the drink of the Doctor!
(And plastic teabags are for Nestenes only imo.)
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2019 20:57:45 GMT
Can I also throw in a pet theory regarding drinking/smoking in the space age? I think that both will have a tendency to decrease over time for one simple reason: oxygen in space is finite.
Anything that can accidentally make fire is your worst enemy in a hermetically-sealed environment. Smoking has the additional drawback of adding impurities into recycled air. Tobacco particles can settle into the dust, the dust gets into the system, makes friends with a particularly nasty mould... It's all bad. Given alien species would also likely be trying to bring similar substances aboard, it makes sense to just put a blanket ban on the human ones as well.
Besides, there'd be other vices by then anyway that'd make both look vastly unappealling. If you're a kid and you want to rebel, you take your parents' mood organ (like the ones seen in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).
|
|
|
Post by nucleusofswarm on Apr 5, 2019 16:08:58 GMT
And now, for your afternoon motivator:
|
|
|
Post by butler on Apr 19, 2019 9:10:49 GMT
I'm going to take another tilt this year. Probably just the one entry this time though.
If I could make one suggestion - and this is only the advice of an unpublished writer - it would be to make sure your idea is very, very simple. I think my pitches were great last year, but in hindsight they were too complex and fiddly for the 5K word limit. By the time I'd properly explained what was going on in each story I was well past the word limit, and I had to spend a lot of time carving them down to size. On the one hand, this was good editing practice, and it taught me some valuable lessons about economy of writing, but it also meant that I ended up discarding a lot of passages that were just nice - character-developing and world-building stuff, stuff that the previous winners all had in spades, AS WELL AS great and engaging concepts.
In other words, pick an idea for which 5000 words will be a comfortable fit, not a squeeze.
|
|
Tony Jones
Chancellery Guard
Professor Chronotis
Still rockin' along!
Likes: 2,132
|
Post by Tony Jones on Apr 20, 2019 12:55:35 GMT
I'm going to take another tilt this year. Probably just the one entry this time though. If I could make one suggestion - and this is only the advice of an unpublished writer - it would be to make sure your idea is very, very simple. I think my pitches were great last year, but in hindsight they were too complex and fiddly for the 5K word limit. By the time I'd properly explained what was going on in each story I was well past the word limit, and I had to spend a lot of time carving them down to size. On the one hand, this was good editing practice, and it taught me some valuable lessons about economy of writing, but it also meant that I ended up discarding a lot of passages that were just nice - character-developing and world-building stuff, stuff that the previous winners all had in spades, AS WELL AS great and engaging concepts. In other words, pick an idea for which 5000 words will be a comfortable fit, not a squeeze. I'd echo that and suggest you be able to be really concise in a short paragraph discussing the idea of the story (or even a phrase) such as Wagon Train in Space (the original short-concept for Star Trek, Wagon Train being a then popular Western drama). Simon Guerrier ran a workshop on pitching one Big Finish Day and the simple concept the group came up with was The Seventh Doctor crossed with Godfather and the byline I'll make you an offer you can't rrrrefuse!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2019 7:30:42 GMT
I'm going to take another tilt this year. Probably just the one entry this time though. If I could make one suggestion - and this is only the advice of an unpublished writer - it would be to make sure your idea is very, very simple. I think my pitches were great last year, but in hindsight they were too complex and fiddly for the 5K word limit. By the time I'd properly explained what was going on in each story I was well past the word limit, and I had to spend a lot of time carving them down to size. On the one hand, this was good editing practice, and it taught me some valuable lessons about economy of writing, but it also meant that I ended up discarding a lot of passages that were just nice - character-developing and world-building stuff, stuff that the previous winners all had in spades, AS WELL AS great and engaging concepts. In other words, pick an idea for which 5000 words will be a comfortable fit, not a squeeze. I'd echo that and suggest you be able to be really concise in a short paragraph discussing the idea of the story (or even a phrase) such as Wagon Train in Space (the original short-concept for Star Trek, Wagon Train being a then popular Western drama). Simon Guerrier ran a workshop on pitching one Big Finish Day and the simple concept the group came up with was The Seventh Doctor crossed with Godfather and the byline I'll make you an offer you can't rrrrefuse! That all reminds me of when Steven Moffat gave that one-liner pitch to Mark Gatiss during the production of Series 5: "Churchill versus the Daleks." And by the way, here is one of my pitches for this year. Rose Tyler meets the Death Star trash compactor, but inside her bedroom.
|
|
|
Post by mark687 on May 8, 2019 14:33:51 GMT
|
|
|
Post by timegirl on May 8, 2019 15:09:30 GMT
Hi I am new to the forum and I would love some advice on my entry. I had my whole plot drafted out in detail, it was going to be themed around the relationship between Rose and the Tenth Doctor. However then I saw the guidelines for this years contest stated that there were no new series companions aloud even though we are able to use new series Doctors. I still like certain elements of my story I had and would like advice on how I can make it work with these new restrictions. The main elements I think could still work ( without giving away too much) are that it features a weakened Tenth Doctor in a strange unreal fairytale like world ruled by a mysterious being that has stollen the Doctor’s identity. I either thinking of doing the story with either the Tenth Doctor on his own or having him paired up with Sara Jane. What do you guys think?
|
|
|
Post by masterdoctor on May 8, 2019 15:49:28 GMT
Hi I am new to the forum and I would love some advice on my entry. I had my whole plot drafted out in detail, it was going to be themed around the relationship between Rose and the Tenth Doctor. However then I saw the guidelines for this years contest stated that there were no new series companions aloud even though we are able to use new series Doctors. I still like certain elements of my story I had and would like advice on how I can make it work with these new restrictions. The main elements I think could still work ( without giving away too much) are that it features a weakened Tenth Doctor in a strange unreal fairytale like world ruled by a mysterious being that has stollen the Doctor’s identity. I either thinking of doing the story with either the Tenth Doctor on his own or having him paired up with Sara Jane. What do you guys think? First off, welcome to the forum. We are extremely pleased to have you as part of our small family. In regards to advice, I think you have a great story in the makings, however, I would simply send an email to Big Finish about using 10 and Sarah Jane together as she might be an exception to the rule due to her appearance in School Reunion. Knowing Big Finish, they are more than happy to help you with those kinds of questions. Much luck to you.
|
|