Okay, this story has two faults. One: it didn't get anywhere. Two: it sounded too much like a shopping list. A long one at that.
You need to put your imagination to dynamic stuff, to draw the reader into the story. It can't be predictable. Just my two cents.
Okay, crazy I know you mean well but let me explain. I have written enough conventional stories with beginning middle and end. The idea of this as I say in the actual thing is that it is an essay not a story as such. I now have 53 a4 pages of stuff I have written, from puzzles to poems to stories and so on and what I have tried to do each time is something different from before. If I didnt at least try to do that then all I would end up with is scifi stories as they are what I enjoy reading. I do not agree that what I wrote was in any way predictable and reiterate that it is NOT a story...I am exercising my imagination to try to create as many crazy characters as possible. If I were to attempt to create a story I would not be able to cover even half of them and I felt all the ideas were valid. As illustration let me point out the story "The World's Most Exclusive Chess Club" where I used a number of ideas, but far less than this one, and it stretched to 9 pages of a4 paper. 2-3 pages is my preferred length. To use all these characters if possible would have stretched to 15 pages. And as so many of the sentences started with the word "Patient" I am well aware it could come across as a list. I tried to embellish it enough so this did not happen, but regardless I myself am happy with the result. I currently have 3 other ideas I am working on, 2.5 of which are conventional stories.
I get your point. You're just stretching your imagination, fair enough.
I used to enjoy Clive Cussler's stories, until he put out Golden Buddha. I almost fcuking threw the book out the window. If you read the reviews on amazon.com, you'll find that I was not alone in my reaction. Why? Because the author spent hundreds of pages on character descriptions, nothing more. The story didn't get anywhere (not sure about that, cause I gave up reading).
The point is, don't get the desire to be different screw up your ability to write interesting stories.
Nice "story" - more than vaguely Borgesian, to my mind.
(P.S. I once knew a cat that was addicted to cold turkey - slices of the Bernard Matthews / bootiful sort. Sadly, all attempts to make her go cold turkey proved counterproductive.)
Thanks, crazy. It was important personally to me to write, however, as I have spent a month in a mental institution. I don't recommend it.
Thanks, crazy. It was important personally to me to write, however, as I have spent a month in a mental institution. I don't recommend it.
Sorry to hear that... I hope it wasn't chess-related!
Not chess-related, no but everything including chess came into my delusions - a male nurse they had shadowing me to make sure I was okay played me a game of chess and walked into the old 1) f3 e5 2) g4 thing and made me really paranoid. Up to that point I had imagined he was a chess prodigy of some sort. True.
Blimey (re the Fool's Mate scenario)! 
Trust you're feeling a lot better now. Having had depression some time ago myself, I have an inkling of how shitty mental health problems can be.
Aye, five years now without a single day off work sick. I still have the occasional symptoms like spasmodic jerking but nothing I cannot live with.
You've obviously watched "Legally Blonde"!
I currently have 3 other ideas I am working on, 2.5 of which are conventional stories.
very puzzling indeed...
Ummmm...whose not who's. This is for entertainment only. And if you note that I not only play but centre my writing exclusively on chess then you may just discern that I have an obsession of my own. Your "observation" seems like gibberish, attempting to be erudite. I made it clear that many of them had other conditions which led to them being in the ward.
Okay, I think the principle reason the court found Patient D insane was that he was driven by a position he could not get out of his head into actions clearly against his basic plan and best interest. Again, I did not see a need to go into further detail as each patient is just a snapshot of a person...any more would bore myself, let alone the readers. No offence taken but is there really a need to quote Latin and try to twist things round? I made no assumptions. I am going to shut up now, I am frequently guilty of taking myself too seriously. If you had just said "I don't like it, Patient D seems unrealistic as his sanity is not brought into question by events..."
Patient F is a faker, every real chessplayer knows you are supposed to say J'adoube before you touch, not after.
Of course, I got away with it for many years, since my understanding of the term was faulty. I thought J'adoube was french for "Oops! That would be a blunder. My bad. Let me take it back."
Reminds me of J'adoubovic (Matulovic) who won at least one game against Fischer but who also famously abused the touch-move rule with him.
Where Chessplayers Belong
Hell, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying chess isn't a great game. It is. It's just that I know of no other pastime which makes people so crazy. Not gambling, not philandering, not even drug use. I have a bit of insider knowledge, you see, working where I do; I'm a psychiatric nurse in a rather special ward in a private clinic. Our head consultant at this branch has a keen interest in one narrow field of psychiatry – he is so sought after that the healthcare company indulges him – he specialises in crazy chessplayers. Any case he hears about in our network of clinics is transferred to his care. From my point of view, the fact that each of the patients has signed a privacy waiver so The Doc can publish his research, means I can talk freely about them. What I'll do is give you a verbal virtual tour. I guess I will just designate the patients by a letter each – the poor souls deserve that much anonymity. Let me also say, starting this, that I have only the utmost respect for the doctor and his methods – he really relates to his subjects, he gives them individual care and therapy. If I seem amused at any point, I assure you I am not mocking the patients – I empathise with the pathos of their situations.
In general, there are some little quirks we notice – some chessplayers have little fixations like having their kingside pieces rotated to face their queenside ones so they can tell them apart while playing (rooks must drive them crazy, so to speak, having no discernible “front”); other players obsessively run games over and over in their minds. Here, though, I will address the really special cases. Its worth noting though that not all of the quirks which motivate the person are the ones they are consigned to mental institutions for; in some cases there are deeper disorders but for the purposes of this essay I will ignore them as being more or less irrelevant. Likewise, the staff give all round care for the many and diverse things that ail the patients, but The Doc's reason for including them here is the same reason I am writing this – chessplayers are really crazy. Our recreational facilities of course include a playing area and a quiet thinking area. Enough about that for now though, lets talk about the patients themselves.
Although most of them are what the public would term “chess nuts”, the one I'll start with is Patient A, who is literally addicted to chess. This condition is so strong that when he is denied a chessboard for over two hours he actually suffers withdrawal symptoms akin to a heroin user needing a fix. The Doc has tried counselling, cold turkey, hypnosis and many other strategies but was forced to relent at a stage where Patient A is in such anguish that there seems no road back if he is not given his board. Slightly less tragic and more comic is Patient B: an obsessive who, amongst other more mundane manifestations of his illness, every time he loses a game steals away his king and buries it in the nearest plot of earth he can find, generally in the hospital grounds from where we have rescued a number of chesspieces. There are still half a dozen kings missing from the clinic's sets, but he shrieks uncontrollably if we attempt to interfere with his habit, so usually now we just watch him after a game to make it easier to retrieve the piece. Then there's Patient C, who is convinced that his parents paid to have him genetically engineered in the womb to be a chess prodigy and that any move he makes is truly inspired. He handles the inevitable losses by declaring that he deliberately lost to encourage those less-advantaged than himself.
Patient D very nearly ended up in the prison system rather than the mental health one as he was on trial for smuggling a chess set made out of cannabis resin from Indonesia. The court, however, found no problem in declaring him insane when it heard that the circumstances of his discovery were that he broke open the packaging of the drugs in the airport, to set the board and pieces up in the middle of the luggage area, desperate to look at a chess position he could not get out of his head and was subsequently detected by the sniffer dogs. Patient E delusionally talks in chess moves, believing always that he is making sense and getting frustrated when no-one understands. He points to, for example, request a piece of toast in the eating area and declares “King to c3”. What is most remarkable, and has The Doc constantly taking notes when with him, is that he seems to use the same utterances for the same expressions of intent; he has in effect his own complex language. Patient F touches unwary passers-by in intimate places and declares “J'adoube”; he cannot be dissuaded from this and had ended up with us after numerous arrests for doing this to the general public.
Patient G paranoidly believes he is surrounded by androids and only trusts patients or staff if he sees them making a mistake at chess, as he sees that as showing them to be human. Patient H thinks he is the chairman of a FIDE committee which is looking at new ways to evolve chess: he approaches people asking their opinions on proposals such as giving the queen the additional power of a knight, to give the board an extra file, to add three extra pawns each on the kingside or to allow two moves at once. Such is the nature of mental illness that some of the other inmates actually believe he is who he says he is; some others mock him of course. Patient I intrigues me. He plays chess with an imaginary friend constantly, but that's not the interesting bit – he plays very badly but I have watched his games and some of the moves his “opponent” plays are truly insightful and brilliant. If we could only reincorporate this other identity then such a player he would be. He, of course, moves the pieces for this “friend” without seeming to know he does it. When asked, however, if someone else can play against his friend, he replies affirmatively then rises from the board, leaving the person who has asked this facing the empty chair.
Patient J is nicknamed The Arbiter – he goes around hushing people, nodding to himself at times and occasionally asking confused-looking people (which there are here in abundance) if they need assistance. He also tries to adjust people's watches to the time control he feels is relevant. Patient K is a strange sort who believes himself to be a humble pawn till at a moment of his mind's choosing, he decides he has promoted to a queen and starts charging about the place; also as a pawn he swipes at people who go past him, shouting “en passant”. When he gets out of bed he charges forward, presumably the equivalent of the two square movement rule. Patient L has his whole body tattooed in chessboards and exposes himself, demanding that people play on him. Patient M has a variant of Tourette's syndrome where he spontaneously says “check” or “mate in two” or other chess phrases in the middle of conversations, oblivious to the fact that he is doing this. Patient N considers himself a Medium who channels the ghosts of dead grandmasters; harmless enough in itself, but like so many of the inmates he has other symptoms which merit his stay in a ward but which are not relevant to this.
Patient O has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and mysophobia (fear of germs) but finds an odd release from his anxieties when he is playing chess and only then – a tranquillity comes over him. Patient P is a kleptomaniac who used to steal a piece or a pawn every time he visited a chess club till his apartment was filled with pieces from clubs; even since his admission here he attempts to gather trophies – not that some other patients don't take the odd one, but we have been known to take whole sets' worth out of his room on occasion. Patient Q walks like a knight, making a curious little side-step after every two paces forward – this would be funny to see if he did not have such a pained expression; having talked to him, I know he wants to stop doing it but cannot. Another challenge for The Doc I guess. Patient R was admitted here after stomach surgery following a rupture, as he compulsively eats chespieces; we keep a careful watch on him here and have on almost all occasions managed to prevent him from continuing this habit. He does, however, beg slices of bread from the kitchen staff which I have seen him fashion into crude pieces. These we allow him to eat, obviously; it would be cruel to deny him that small release for his compulsion.
Patient S really does not belong here but was found wandering the streets one day and was brought to the nearest hospital as his identity was unknown and there was no other care that could be found for him, presumably following the death of a family member who looked after him. He is an idiot savant who recites reams of theory over and over. He seems to have an endless supply of theoretical “knowledge” - about 10 years out of date from what we can gather, but humbling to witness. Patient T is a real character; he has the delusion that he is a wealthy playboy from the 1920s in a smoking jacket in an exclusive chess club; he wanders round in a dressing gown using opening names as adjectives - “How very Yugoslav attack of you” for example, or “Breakfast today was a bit on the Ruy Lopez side”. Patient U will not speak and will only talk by writing on scoresheets – we have tried denying him these and he was without any communication for days till finally sketching out a rough scoresheet on some toilet paper and requesting some aspirin for a sore head on it. Now we humour him – photocopying them is no real problem and we have at least pressed upon him the need to write in small letters so they could be used for long conversations.
Patient V is another one whose reasons for admission to care were for other causes which I will keep confidential but who was transferred to this clinic as he can only sleep with a chess clock ticking beside his ear. How this was found out, I am unclear on but no other type of clock will suffice. Patient W believes he is the Black King, that other patients are black pieces and the doctors and nurses are white bits – when a doctor/nurse is in a straight line with (or facing) him he imagines he is in check and panics. Patient X is a sad soul who has a complicated story. He believes himself to be Adolf Anderssen after reading one day about that player's immortal game, presuming that he therefore never died and somehow that he was him, explaining why no games were seen of his any more as he was trapped in this institution. He wanders the halls smiling sadly as if at boards no other can detect let alone understand. Patient Y dubs himself the White Bishop and sees everyone else as black pieces and urges us all to cast out the darkness in our souls. Last of all is Patient Z, who believes there is a race of gremlins who whisper moves in his ear and make him make bad moves. Having played chess a fair bit myself, sometimes I am not sure he is wrong.
What you make of these poor people is up to you. I present them purely for the oddity of their situations and do not intend to mock or exploit them. Let them instead be a cautionary tale, for does not every chessplayer have a little of what it takes to join them nestling inside his fervour and obsession with the game? There, but for grace, go I....