Activity for Jay
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Spiritual elements in a science-fiction novel That's a question of definitions that one could debate endlessly. Definitions are invented by people, often indirectly by simply using words with a certain meaning in mind without necessarily spelling out a definition. On subtleties like this, different dictionaries will often have different details ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Do we simplify descriptions when they sound weird? My first thought on reading your question is a tangent: I find it distracting that you use the word "small" twice in such a short space. Is it important that the coin and/or the wallet is small? If not, you might just drop one of the "small"s. "The woman pulled a small coin out of the wallet." Or rep... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Detail vs. filler I think the textbook answer is: Does the detail contribute to the story? If you describe how a character's house is filled with guns and bombs, that tells us something very different about him than if his house is filled with flowers and framed poetry quotes. A detail may prove relevant later. This ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to deal appropriately with an inappropriate sexual relationship First, I'd check on the law where you live. Writing about a child engaging in sex might legally be considered child pornography. I write non-fiction so I've never personally had to deal with this issue. I recall reading years ago that in the United States written words are never considered pornograp... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Where's the balance between realism and story? Your question starts out asking about plot holes but then you appear to shift to asking about humor and parody. Those are not at all the same thing. I suppose you could describe both as "the story doesn't make sense". But a plot hole is when the author has failed to think through events in the story ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is page range inclusive or exclusive? Page ranges are normally inclusive. "Pages 1-5" means pages 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. I think most readers would be extremely confused if you wrote "pages 1-5" and mean 1, 2, 3, and 4. Note that you should include a page in the range even if the relevant text takes up only a small part of the page. Like i... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Do I really need a platform to sell my novel? Do you HAVE to? Of course not. But how many copies are you expecting or hoping to sell? I've self-published 4 books. All non-fiction, which I think is rather a different market from fiction, but whatever. If your book is listed on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some other online bookstore, some number... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there such a thing as too inconvenient? I read an article by a writer once in which he said that he spent a great deal of his time putting doors in alleys. And he explained that what he meant was, if he has a scene where the hero is being chased by the villain and the hero runs into an alley and there's a convenient door that the hero can ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: A torrent of foreign terms This is the same problem that experts always have when trying to explain their field to the general public. My advice is: don't be such a purist. I develop software for a living. Computer systems are complicated and we have lots of technical terms. But I avoid using technical terms when talking to p... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: The seven story archetypes. Are they truly all of them? Most attempts at classifying things like this are completely arbitrary. Different writers will come up with different lists, and it's not like you could somehow prove that one is right and the others are wrong. This reminds me ... nothing about writing, but about classifying. A friend of mine who ha... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is straight-up writing someone's opinions telling? As you say yourself, "show don't tell" is a guideline and not an absolute rule. I write computer software for a living. (Sadly, I make way too little money writing to live on.) I've had many occasions in the software business where someone will tell me that something I did is wrong because it violat... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is it bad to describe a character long after their introduction? As Secespitus says -- and I upvoted his answer -- if you delay describing a character, then the reader forms a mental image, and then later you break it and it's very disconcerting. The reader now has to go back in his mind and re-imagine the whole story up to this point. If something about the char... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is it advisable to begin marketing a book before it is published? I haven't seen the presentation you describe and it's not clear to me what sort of marketing it calls for. You mention giving out a free sample. Like a sample chapter or something? I see two big catches to doing this before the book is complete. One, as Amadeus mentions, what if you write chapter 1,... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? Direct answer: Some consonants in English sound similar. They tend to fall in groups: > b, d, p, t, th, v > > c, ch, g, j, k, q, s, sh, x, z > > f, p > > h > > l > > m, n > > r > > w > > y That is, "Emma" and "Enna" sound a lot alike, but "Emma" and "Ecka" sound very different. I note that... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Writing about oneself objectively This is a big subject that probably can't be answered in a brief post, but some thoughts that come to mind: 1. Give objective facts, not subjective evaluations. For example, "I was valedictorian", not, "I was the smartest person in my class". Or, "I was responsible for managing the inventory for 20 ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Writing in a Christian voice I'm a white Baptist who is married to a black Baptist, so if you have specific questions about the sort of things we say and do, maybe I can help. :-) What you describe is an example of a problem writers face all the time: How do I write a character whose background is very different from my own? S... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Using words from another book There are two issues here: plagiarism and copyright. Plagiarism is when you copy from another writer (or composer or whatever, but we're talking about writing here) without giving proper credit. It is very easy to avoid plagiarism: Include a proper footnote. Copyright violation is when you use some... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Is It Legal to Use Military Insignias of Defunct Nations? Under US copyright law, anything created by the US government is not protected by copyright. It is automatically public domain. (There are some complexities to this that we could get into but they're not relevant here.) But it doesn't necessarily follow that every other country in the world has the s... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How does one write from a minority culture? A question on cultural references Sure. There are two possibilities. Oh, you used religion as the example so let's continue with that example. Similar things would apply to an ethnic heritage, or for that matter to the subculture built around a hobby like video games or Civil War re-enactment or whatever. One, you can throw in an a... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Is it ok to have many characters who only appear for a few chapters? I hate to give the old standby answer, "it all depends ..." But, it all depends. Of course in most stories there are characters who appear briefly to perform some specific function and then disappear, and the reader thinks nothing of it. Like if the main character rides on an airplane, you might bri... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: When writing in a school context without ever having been to school, how do I make sure that my story is accurate within school context? This is a classic problem for writers. I once heard a lecture by Isaac Asimov, a well-known science fiction writer, where he said that his first attempt at writing fiction was set in a small town, and people told him that was a bad idea because he had, at that point in his life, never been outside Ne... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to secure my written work from being stolen or copied before publishing? As Darkocean noted, the instant you write your story, it is protected by copyright law. "Is there any official body who can control any type of theft or plagiarism of written content?" Yes. In the United States, that would be the United States Copyright Office and the court system. Other countries h... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Dead children in pre-modern setting Is child mortality relevant to your story? If not, then I just wouldn't bring it up. There are all sorts of tragedies in the world. I don't consider a story unrealistic because it failed to discuss every possible thing that could go wrong with anyone's life. In the 21st century, people die from cance... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Do hard to pronounce names break immersion? Yes, I find it distracting. To me, the problem is not so much if a name is hard to pronounce, but if it's difficult to figure out how it's supposed to be pronounced. Unless the spelling of a name is somehow important to your story, if you're going to use made up names, I'd say to spell them phonetic... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Not having any white MC's? Speaking as a white person, I can't imagine that I would be offended that a story contained no white characters. Depending on the setting, it might or might not seem odd. I mean, if the story is set in a major city in Sweden and there are no white people in sight, that might seem peculiar. But if it'... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Are paragraph spaces used for emphasis? "Am I allowed ..." No. If you do this, the Writing Police will come to your house, break down the door, and arrest you. Seriously, what do you mean by "am I allowed"? Who is going to stop you and how? The real question is, "Is this a good idea?" There appear to be two issues here: 1. Should you pu... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Ripoff Character It's perfectly reasonable to say, "Hey, I think it was interesting the way this character was so calm under pressure, I'd like to use that in a story of my own." But if you write a story with a character named "Larry Skywalker" who fights an evil galactic empire using a mysterious power you call "the... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is it much costlier to self-publish a 6x9 book than a 5x8 with a POD printer? You'd have to check with the individual printer. At KDP, cost is based on color vs black & white and number of pages, and that's it. https://kdp.amazon.com/en\US/help/topic/G201834340 A 200 page 6x9 books costs exactly the same amount as a 200 page 5x8 book. As you can presumably fit more text on a... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Class/Course Names in Fiction My first inclination would be to write it the same way it's written in school materials. If the course catalog or class schedule says "Algebra 2", that's what I'd write. I'd do something different if there was potential for confusion. Like to take a contrived example, if there was a class call "Medi... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is it okay to have a character that has the same first or last name as another famous character It depends how distinctive the name is. If you have a character named "John", well, there are lots of other fictional characters, and real people, named "John" would not bother me at all. There are plenty of real people named "Snow". I think few people would even notice the similarity, or would onl... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Why do writers use pseudonyms? Reasons that I've heard of: (I'm overlapping other posters here somewhat but I'm trying to be complete.) 1. The author doesn't want family, friends, or business associates to know that he is writing this sort of book. The most obvious example would be if he is writing pornography. This includes othe... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Will an explicit resemblance to an Actor put-off the readers disliking him? I think it's a bad idea. 1. Personally, I have no idea who "Benedict Cumberbatch" is. Maybe I've seen him on TV or in movies and don't remember the name, or maybe I've never seen him. The odds are that many of your readers don't know who he is either. If you should be so fortunate that your book is ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do I know if a concept is sexist or not? This is why many people laugh at feminism. Yes, saying that losing one's fertility is a price that some are reluctant to pay implies that fertility has value. Duh. Who in his or her right mind would say that fertility does NOT have value? It is perfectly possible and rational to say that the ability... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How do I know which elements I can use from the work which orginally inspired me? I haven't read "Blood on the Stars", but I don't think the details of that story matter here, so I'll plunge ahead. Maybe I should distinguish the legal issue of copyright from the artistic issue of "your story is a rip-off of this other story". Copyright protects exact words (or pictures or music ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Will traditional publishers force you to remove brands? I don't think I've ever referenced a real brand name in something I've gotten published, the issue just never came up. So I can't speak from experience with a publisher there. But I've read plenty of book and articles that reference real brand names. It's fairly common for a book to say, "Bob drank a... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Are rhymes bad in prose? As @MarkBaker said, there are lots of "accidental" rhymes in prose that no one notices. But if you structure your prose to call attention to a rhyme, I think in practice it's not prose any more, it's poetry. Maybe a very short snippet of poetry, but poetry. Or at least, I think that's how the reader ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What are the Pros and Cons of long names? When you talk about the "translation", do you mean that you are writing your book in some language other than English and you are translating between English and your native language to ask this question? Or do you mean that you have a made-up language in your book, and these names are in this made-u... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Referencing modern pop culture in science fiction Easy answer: Don't include anachronistic pop culture references. "writing a geeky character who does not make such references is almost unrealistic" Well, maybe, but surely not jarringly so. I'm a geeky person. If I spent a few hours with other geeky friends and no one made any sort of reference to a... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Should creativity or eloquence in a technical document be removed during review? There are two issues here. One is whether technical documents should include "creative" language. The other is whether problems with style should be fixed despite looming deadlines. On the second point -- assuming that whoever is responsible has decided that there is a problem with the document -- i... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Why are clichés discouraged in fiction writing? I'd note that there's a difference between using cliches in dialog, and having a plot that is a cliche. But anyway ... There are lots of tried and true plot lines. Anyone who watches a romance story and gets to the point where the hero and heroine have a fight, and starts biting her nails and saying... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: I feel like I'm plagiarizing my story? Originality is not a yes/no, true/false thing. There are degrees of originality. There are lots of stories about a boy and girl who meet and fall in love. They are not all rip-offs of "Romeo and Juliet". Falling in love is part of the normal human experience. There are lots of stories about a hero ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: "Real people don't make good fictional characters". Really true? First, as others have noted, real people's lives are rarely as event-filled as the lives of fictional characters. For example, Howard Carter became a world-renowned archaeologist when he discovered the tomb of King Tut. John Champollion became famous for deciphering the Rosetta Stone. I could give ot... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: A question on the ambiguity of the Alternate History genre What is your purpose in wanting to do this? If the story is 99% set in the real world, and then you throw in this one paragraph of alternate history, and then the story goes back to the real world and the alternate history is never mentioned again ... I don't see the point. The reader will either th... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Sympathetic portrayal of devout, rule-abiding characters "I'm having trouble portraying religious, devout characters as protagonists or viewpoint characters. When I try, I get the sense that the reader - not sharing the characters' beliefs - will have trouble accepting the characters' non-rational beliefs and obligations." Well there's your problem right ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is discovering memories are false, a plot twist that invalidates my story so far? The trick, I think, is to make this revelation in a way that, (a) does not invalidate everything that has happened before, and (b) that does not leave the reader wondering if the "new reality" is actually real. For example, if the first half of the book was all about the hero searching to find his l... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to perpetuate the plot-driving riddle without frustrating the reader? A friend of mine once said, "Some stories don't end. They just stop." It is, of course, true that in real life not all crimes are solved, not all hidden treasures are found, not all romances lead to the couple living happily ever after, etc. But a story is not real life. The reader expects the story... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to talk about certain anatomy without sounding vulgar or cowardly? We've discussed use of vulgar language in fiction on this forum a number of times, e.g. Swearing - Censor, allude, or include? and Swearing in a book, within a context. Too offensive? To summarize my opinion briefly: Some number of people are offended by vulgar language and won't read a book that ha... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Should mystery stories have resolutions? In principle, you can have an open-ended story, where you leave the mystery unresolved and present it as, Mr Reader, what do you think the solution is? But in my humble opinion, this is hard to pull off in a satisfying way. Your post reminds me of a movie I saw years ago, "Unidentified", that was a... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Should I defend my character's appearance? As I understand it, then: The editor has said that if you don't have your character wear a hoodie, he will not publish your comic book. You have tried to talk him out of this and he won't budge. So you have three choices: 1. Give in to the editor's wishes despite your opinion that this hurts the st... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Indexing: after or during the writing process This is really a matter for personal preference. There's no provably right answer. Personally, for my books, I didn't worry about the index until about the 4th draft. When I was basically happy with the text, then I stated thinking about terms that might be worth indexing. I'd think of a word I want... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |