Posts by System
This is something I've pondered before. I asked about one gesture on yahoo answers long ago. All I got was a guy saying that even he didn't know the term for it (it was the gesture where someone ho...
You see this a lot in fantasy fiction, where everyone on the planet (and sometimes beyond) speaks the same language, even though it makes absolutely no logical sense for them to have any knowledge ...
I believe the key question to ask yourself - and your marcomm colleagues - is the aim of each piece of documentation you are producing. Using your example, you can have two kinds of introductory m...
I have an idea for the beginning of a story. I have the setting, the protagonist, and the events that set the story in motion, including the inciting incident and the first plot point. I have, in s...
If the technology was transported from the future to the age in question, it might be considered time-travel sci-fi. If the technology was developed in the Medieval period independently of temporal...
I concur that Does DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) Apply to Documentation? pretty much answers the question on what is best for the user. However, the question was: Which one is more futureproof? ...
Qualities of the documentation itself, even quantitive ones, usually have little intrinsic value. However, quantitive impact of docs on other areas can be often precisely measured and meaningfully...
A book that I'm currently writing called Surge features an enemy faction called the Degenerates that are heavily inspired by the Scythians (Indo-Iranian horse nomads that ruled the Eurasian Steppe ...
One way to demonstrate a character's desire implicitly is to examine the consequences. What is at stake? What does the character stand to lose if she can't reach her goal? If the character fails to...
My rule of thumb is "the right information at the right time", especially in content that's supposed to be consumed on a topic rather than a chapter/book basis. Sure, this leads to some repetition ...
I watched a semi-popular movie called deadpool, in which the "hero" comes across this dilemma while fighting female assassins, and we are not shown the results of his introspection. Here is the pr...
In language, when a mistake becomes common enough, it's standard usage. One way to check whether the original meaning of a word has evolved beyond your preferred usage is to check a dictionary or ...
The Microsoft Manual of Style puts it well: Don’t try to be funny. Jokes, slang, and sarcasm are context-specific and hard to translate and localize. What’s funny to you might offend or alienat...
Usually, at the end of a crime, thriller, horror, fantasy, science fiction, or other action genre novel, the identity of the antagonist is uncovered and the riddle that drives the plot is resolved:...
For desensitizing yourself, I'd question the wisdom of that. If it's bad writing, it should hurt. Let it hurt if you want to learn from it. I purposefully read bad fiction in order to keep my criti...
As a reader, the first thing I want to know about a character is why I should care about this character. In an action-adventure setting, without knowing more about what's going on, I'd suggest lett...
This is a difficult question to answer, as, in my opinion, this is largely a matter of opinion. The short answer is to do both and see what works best for you.
What are various ways to reduce reader fatigue by adjusting scenes? Make sure there is a point to the scene. Does the POV character have a goal? If not, consider adding one. A scene with a goal w...
If you are trying to convince readers that women are an important part of war in an alternate world, is sticking them in costumes designed to titillate instead of protect damage the worldbuilding c...
As author Eric T. Benoit once said, your job as a writer isn’t to convey emotion, but to invoke it. Trying to convey emotion more often than not leads to tired clichés of clenched fists and sweat d...
All of reality exists inside the cosmic womb of the goddess. People, planets, animals, etc, were all created when she bled into the universe, birthing life to all things. The faith honors this even...
The rule is simple in general: use the present tenses when discussing events in literary works. One situation where this gets more complicated is where you have to switch timelines because, for exa...
When analysing a book and speaking of a character that dies, do you still you present tense as you are still analysing a book? If I were to make up a quick example: "Despite Anna's death, the plot...
I want to write a religion similar to Christianity but with God represented as feminine. It is meant to highlight the differences between the sexes and emphasise traits associated with women over m...
I have googled this question several times but I'm just not clear on the answers I'm getting. For example, I know that screenplays/plays/books such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Enough Said, The Spa...
