Activity for Seth Gordon
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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| Edit | Post #9695 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #9415 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #9257 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #9153 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #9140 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #9097 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #9069 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #5791 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #1959 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #714 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Character development in a story? I, as a reader, cannot really know what a character is like until I see that character tested. Any clod can say “I love you”, but what if the beloved replies “If you really loved me, you’d kill my ex-husband”? (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Can I use parenthesis in a conversation > Then he said to her: "I told you I won't do that!” In an undertone, he added, “And I think you shouldn’t either.” Unfortunately, I think that’s the best you can do. I’ve hardly ever seen parentheses used as punctuation within dialogue, so if I saw it now, I would have no idea how to interpret them... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: How do evil protagonists win the reader over in dark fantasy stories? In 1999, a book called The Last Ringbearer was published in Russia: it’s an account of the War of the Ring, from the losers’ perspective. It hasn’t been professionally published in the US, out of fear that the Tolkien estate’s lawyers would descend on the publisher like a swarm of Ring-Wraiths. Howev... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Using emails in an autobiography IANAL but I believe that in the US, the author of an email owns the copyright to it, so if you reproduce someone else’s email to you in your autobiography, you have to either get their permission or be prepared to make a fair-use defense. (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Is the following extended metaphor/group of metaphors too overwhelming? The number of treasure-similies seems over-the-top to me, the prose equivalent of a scene from Tampopo. Maybe I would appreciate them better in the context of the rest of the story, or maybe I would appreciate them better if I liked sushi. :-) Your second version is definitely wrong. More verbs need... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Can we enable readers to connect to far future humanity, without pretending they wouldn’t be different? Some cultural changes over the past century or five have been very deep, and some have been shallow. It’s much easier for women to get divorced; that’s a deep change. They often announce those divorces on Facebook; that’s a shallow change. (The growth of social media in general is a deep change, but ... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: How do I do literary research on an unresearched topic? Read a lot of books with Guardian characters, and as you read, pay attention to your own reactions to the story. Then step back and ask yourself why certain scenes or paths of character development worked or didn’t work for you as a reader. It can be especially helpful to collect examples of stories ... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Does anyone know the average number of times a new author has to submit before acceptance? It’s hard to give a useful answer to this question, because the vast majority of work submitted for publication is really, really awful. One editor has a “rough breakdown of manuscript characteristics, from most to least obvious rejections” here (scroll down to the numbered list). If you can write a ... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Resources for character development I wrote a short story whose two characters were a white-collar criminal being held under house arrest in rural Maine, and a guerrilla soldier who broke into her house. It became clear as I developed the story that these characters had different value systems: the soldier saw himself as a warrior with... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Problem: Scenes that are unavoidable, but boring If the scene is boring, it’s not necessary. Think about what you actually need to convey to the reader to move the plot forward, write something interesting that delivers that necessary information, and skip everything else. This may be a good time to break the “show, don’t tell” rule. “Eight hours... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |