Activity for Chris Sunami
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How do you know if a book is ready? In general, I think @lostinfrance's answer is excellent, this is just a supplement to that: You can't necessarily ever know if your book is ready or not in terms of content, but you do need to make sure it is ready from a technical point of view. If it has any spelling, grammar or formatting issues,... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Can the protagonist lose his strength without losing the reader? Part of why we read fiction is to learn something by going through an experience with the character --that's what makes identifying with the character important. For someone to lose what they and others have always felt is their core strength is a real experience, and one that could be compelling to ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: For a new writer, is it better to enter contests or submit to magazines/journals? It is tough to get published in a magazine or journal, but if you want to be a professional writer, I think that's the route to go. Most writing contests are not terribly high visibility, and quite a lot of them are expensive to enter. A single solid publishing credit in a reputable magazine is worth... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How do I get rid of the tic of paired adjectives, predicates, etc.? This doesn't seem to me like a serious problem, it's just a part of your own personal writing style. Even in technical writing, you don't necessarily want to edit all individuality out of what you produce. My advice would be only to resist the impulse to add this in places where it isn't really neces... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How can I help a writing-phobic but competent student develop their writing? There's a technique that can be helpful for someone imprisoned by perfectionism, but it does require a certain amount of willingness to try it: The idea is that you commit to producing a certain amount of writing daily --say 1 page --and that the writing should be deliberately bad: nonsense, stream ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: Research overgrown main novel plan and writing If you write a history, it will likely be of interest only to yourself (or as preparation for your book). That's not necessarily a reason not to write it. JRR Tolkien put years of effort into world-building for his books, which is a key reason for their continued popularity. If you do go ahead and w... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How to format common words that are made "special"? Typically, italics indicate when a word is being used in a non-standard manner. This seems to me the best choice for the examples given. I could see capitalizing if it was being anthropomorphized or used as a title ("The Darkness"), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. > So you have no choice ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: What makes a bestseller - Writing or Setting? It seems you're using the term setting in a non-standard way to mean genre conventions. Given that, I would say that a mastery of genre, including the fulfillment of the expectations of the core audience, can bring short-term popularity, but that only good writing will endure over the long term. It'... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: A climax where the goal is instantly achieved - Is it satisfying? For me, it all comes down to emotional reality, which can have very little to do with the externals of the scene. When I watch a big Hollywood blockbuster where the lone hero takes on an enormous CGI army with just his trusty sword, it leaves me completely cold, because nothing makes that big army fe... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Prologue and Epilogue in third person and chapters in first person doable? In a sense, this is the whole point to an epilogue --if it had the same feel as the main narrative, it would just be the last chapter. Epilogues exist solely to solve the problem of authors wanting to tell the readers things that don't --for whatever reason --fit into the main framework of the novel ... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Methods for creating slang I think the answer has to come from who your characters are, and why they are using slang. Essentially slang is an in-group word-game. It's a way of distinguishing insiders from outsiders. It can also be a low-key form of resistance to authority. So it depends on your group. Techie slang is filled w... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |
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A: Where does the power granted by a theme come from? At least part of why we read is to learn something --that doesn't mean the characters in the story need to learn something, and it doesn't necessarily mean a moral lesson. You might simply learn what it feels like to be put in an extreme situation, for instance. Having a theme enhances this sense of... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Clear steps for developing a powerful inner conflict (I thought @what gave a great answer, which I upvoted, but it also made me want to look for counterexamples.) In Remains of the Day the main character is a repressed butler who devotes his life to providing exemplary service to a family that may not deserve his loyalty. In the process, he misses a s... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How to indicate that a single letter was removed from a quotation In this example, just move the word in question outside the quotation marks: > It is possible for God to desire "all people to be saved." It's more difficult in the case that the word in question is buried in the quote. In that case, you would probably just put the entire word itself in brackets. ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How do you make a vague metaphor more easy to understand? It's unlikely anyone will make that connection unaided, but, speaking as a big fan of lyrics, it's not necessarily a problem if people don't understand everything in your lyrics. Even more than is the case for ordinary poetry, a large part of successful lyrics is the raw sound of the words. Many gre... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Is sending your characters back to a different century a good way to disguise them? Note: Not a legal expert If you based a character in a historical novel on a real person from the present, it would take a fair amount of concerted effort for anyone to even notice, and even if that character had distinctive traits or speech patterns linked to the real person, one could make a good ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: What does being "heavy handed" mean? And how does one avoid it? Heavy-handed means you force your plot, your characters, your prose, your dialog, and any other aspect of your writing, to fit a preconceived concept, regardless of how well or naturally it integrates with the writing. In other words, you write with no subtlety or realism. It's a subjective judgment,... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: How to keep going after a failed project? Unfortunately, if you can't face rejection of your work, you can't be a writer. The sad truth is even the most successful writers have all had the experience of being at one time or another critically panned, rejected or otherwise. As the saying goes, if you can give up writing, do so, if you can't..... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |