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Activity for Double U‭

Type On... Excerpt Status Date
Edit Post #34997 Initial revision about 5 years ago
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Answer A: I'm trying to figure out whether to discovery write or outline. How do I choose which is right for me?
> Should I outline or discovery write my stories? If you go to YouTube and type in "plotting or pantsing", then you will find a ton of videos about this topic. Some people call it "discovery write vs outline", while other people call it "plotting vs pantsing". I think most people do both. I certain...
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over 5 years ago
Answer A: When a story is longer than a book, is it best to wait until the entire story is done before completing the first book in the story?
Is it a good idea to self-publish a completed first book in what will be a longer series even though the remainder of the story has not yet been written? The publisher wants something marketable. If the first book is a flop, then why would they publish the second or third in the series? It'll be muc...
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almost 6 years ago
Answer A: Naming things the POV character doesn't know
Describe the scene from a person's point of view. You say this: > these characters travel back in time and across the world If I were to travel back in time and across the world, then I would use vocabulary that I know. If something looks like a hole in the ground to me, then I'll describe it as a...
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almost 6 years ago
Answer A: How do you get out of your own psychology to write characters?
Personally, if I want to make a super-realistic human-like character, then I would just write a story based on reality. That is, I would look at my own personal life, study the people in my life, and add the people into my story. The story is based on a series of true events. The characters are all r...
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almost 6 years ago
Question Is my work fiction or non-fiction?
I am currently working on a story. I would like to publish this on a literary magazine website, and this website has only three categories - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. My story is probably not poetry, even though I do pay attention to form and word choice and extreme personification. My stor...
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almost 6 years ago
Answer A: How to describe skin colour, if "white" is not the point of reference?
The white/black/yellow/red race classification system is based on the Western race classification system. Wikipedia is not the best resource and definitely not the most reliable, but sometimes, you can find interesting articles about general topics. Galastel, you mention on your own profile that you...
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almost 6 years ago
Answer A: An LGBT main character, but the book isn't about LGBT issues
On top of all the above answers, I would like to add that self-identity is not the same as sexual orientation. A person may lean towards some kind of biological orientation, but the self-identity varies tremendously between individualistic and collectivistic societies. In individualistic societies, s...
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almost 6 years ago
Answer A: How much description is too much?
Description is too much, when the author wants to explain the scene as if it were a movie instead of a piece of writing. In a movie, the objects in the background are all part of the scene. The story is told by the camera, and the audience sees whatever is on the screen, including the main character'...
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almost 6 years ago
Question Describing the face and physiological responses in different languages and peoples
The English language evolves from the English people, and the English people live way up there, away from the equator. So, it is no wonder that the English language will reflect this. - He was a tall, pale man. - She looked pale and sickly. - He turned pale with fright. The Chinese language evolves...
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almost 6 years ago
Question Using the grammatically correct way or the casual way to express the same idea in another language?
In casual conversation, it is perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition. - How many job applications did you apply to? The grammatically correct way is supposed to be: - To how many job applications did you apply? If the original language's sentence is grammatically correct, then does t...
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about 6 years ago
Answer A: How do I handle different PoVs, at different times and places, each dealing with the same event?
In the Babysitter's Club series by Ann M Martin, there is a special collection of books. This special collection of books may have all the characters in the babysitter's club go on trip to somewhere, and each chapter is one character's point-of-view. You know you are reading from a character's POV, b...
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about 6 years ago
Question How does an author write in hand gestures and non-verbal communication?
Writing in hand gestures and non-verbal communication is kind of tricky. They are deeply cultural symbols, interpreted by a specific group of people. To outsiders, they seem like nonsense. But non-verbal communication is a form of communication, which may be included in a story. Sometimes, a characte...
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about 6 years ago
Question How to interpret a language from a non-speaker's perspective?
I want to create a believable conversation between a character who speaks Mandarin and English and a character who speaks English but does not speak Mandarin. Basically, the Mandarin speaker is supposed to code-switch, but (s)he forgets and instantly says, "好", which means "OK" or "good". I'm guessi...
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over 6 years ago
Question How to indicate that the source language is gender-neutral?
The source language in question is Standard Chinese. It is a gender-neutral language. One big thing that English speakers complain about English is the gendered pronoun, namely the third person singular pronoun. In contrast, Chinese does not use pronouns as heavily as English speakers. Sometimes, pro...
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over 6 years ago
Question How to describe a mythological creature that English has no vocabulary for?
The term is 妖精, which can be translated into English as "fairy", "elf", "goblin". As noted, the Japanese literature uses 妖精 to describe the European fairy. The English translation of 白骨精 in 西游记 (Journey to the West) is "white bone demon". So, this word can be translated into English as fairy, elf, go...
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over 6 years ago
Question How does one add puns in another language?
Back in college, I took a regular English course that was required for all majors. The teacher just happened to be a grad student in British Literature, so we read a lot of British literature. All the books we read were 19th century British Literature books - Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Frankenste...
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over 6 years ago
Answer A: How much agency should main characters have in the plot?
Whoever is telling the story should have the most agency. If Character A is the narrator, then everything should be written in terms of Character A's point of view. After all, people can't read minds. They only know what's in their own minds.
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over 6 years ago
Question How to address family members solely by relationship in dialogue?
Most English speakers probably just care about You, Mom, Dad, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandparents, Great-Grandparents and Ancestors, Children, Grandchildren, etc. That's great... as long as you are writing about a monolingual English-speaking family, living in a Anglophone environment or a society t...
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over 6 years ago
Answer A: The advantages and disadvantages of Fantasy-time
Wikipedia's Definition of High Fantasty Genre: > High fantasy is defined as fantasy set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than "the real", or "primary" world. The secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contra...
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over 6 years ago
Answer A: To what extent can a first person narrative tell someone else's story?
There are some questions that you should consider before you write your piece. 1. Why is this person telling this story? 2. Is this narrator reliable? Will this narrator tell the whole truth objectively, letting the readers to decide the morality of the characters, or will he be biased in some way,...
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over 6 years ago
Question How does one include non-Latin-based script in an overall English work?
For Latin-based languages, the foreign term may be expressed in italics. Gracias. However, what about non-Latin-based languages and non-alphabetic languages? Okay, what if something happens, and the main character makes a comment with a Chinese idiom, 对牛弹琴? Or a character knows another character doe...
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over 6 years ago
Question Is it required to cite the original author, when the original author is unknown and in a foreign language and adapted by an oral narrator?
Here's the scenario. Person A may read a story in a non-English language. As time passes, he still remembers the story and passes it onto his offspring. His children ask him about the author, but the author is forgotten. So, let's say one of the children decides to put the story into written words. D...
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over 11 years ago