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Activity for hszmv‭

Type On... Excerpt Status Date
Edit Post #25983 Initial revision over 4 years ago
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Answer A: How can I shorten a piece of writing effectively?
Try looking for places where you're overly wordy. Your third sentence for example is clunky and seems to be trying to fit in words for the sake of getting close to the maximum. I'd re-arrange it and cut some of the excess. You shouldn't be using infinitive verbs (verbs that are written "to [verb]" wh...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How to start a story after the inciting incident?
I highly recomend reading the novel "Holes" (the 2003 film is probably the only film to break the "book was better" rule, being 99% faithful, but I still recommend a read through). Long story short, the novel basically has three stories running through out, and the first starts in media res and the "...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: What style should I write a torture scene in?
I would advise a dream like haze of blending reality. Dreams can be influenced by real world stimuli (I once had a dream that I was with Scooby-Doo and the gang and we were trying to solve a mystery that included an odd sound no one could find a source for. When I woke up, it turned out that it was m...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How to implement a fictional language in my novel?
So, there are several ways to do this: First, translate into English everything except proper nouns (specific names of people, places, or things) or culturally unique concepts, and insulting words or expressive comments (Mein Gott! for a German who is fluent in English) and anything with counting or ...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Can a normal person investigate a murder?
Yes. Many cold cases (cases that remain unsolved and all leads provided by evidence have dried up) are kept alive by interested members of the public who want to find some closure to the victims, even if evidence does not exist to conclusively prove in trial or the criminal is deceased. Netflix has a...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: In which sections of a research report is it appropriate to include citations?
It largely depends on the style you're writing your paper in, but typically you would include a separate page called works Cited that will give the full citation of all works used and is arranged alphabetically by first word in a citation (usually the author of the work, though other mediums may have...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How can I have a character introduce themselves as humble without making them seem arrogant?
I would say that the humble person should down play a thing they should be proud of, only to be admonished after the down play. The animated film "Superman: Doomsday (2008)" has a great example... only there is one hitch. Lois Lane is visiting Superman in the Fortress of Solitude on a date and Super...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Intentionally misspelling words in dialogue
I would also suggest the spelling change so that the first line is "Lookin' and lookin'..." as that is closer to how the word would be pronounced in a sing-song quality. If the speaker is the villain, you might want to show a quick progression through the first part, and a slower progression for the ...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How to write intercut scenes in a novel?
I do this all the time, and I tend to use short chapters that will contain one scene and break to the next chapter when done OR I will use a line break (either a center justified triple asterisk (\\\) or a long line (in word typing "---" and hitting enter will draw a line between text, though it does...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Writing a novel that is set (semi-)inside an established universe
Another example that I'm fond of is acknowledging a work of fiction as a work of fiction within your own universe. This is frequent in the humor of "The Orville" where characters not owned by the series owners will frequently get discussed, and one of the regulars, a literal minded alien from a cultu...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Dangers of being sympathetic to the killer
We tend to think of fictional characters in terms of "Hero" and "Villain" when this should not be a case. The character of focus in your story is the "Protagonist" and the element directly in his or her path from achieving his or her goal is the "Antagonist". These terms do not mean good and evil bin...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: What are the top most important key elements for a computer game story?
As a life long player of the best known 4X game, Civilization, the "story" of the series is the rise to power of your "empire" and much of the play is about becoming the strongest world power on the map. Recently (Civ III and beyond) the games added features to make each nation unique in terms of pla...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Is anything like the propulsion systems (warp/impulse drives) copyrighted from being use in other sci-fi novels?
As mentioned, the nature of what a Warp Drive does is a scientific possibility and considered a possible near future tech with NASA working on a similar in principle Warp Drive (in Star Trek, the Warp Drive creates a spacial distortion that makes space contract as the ship's bow moves towards it and ...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Non-linear style used by *Arrow*
"In Media Res" (literally "In the Middle of Things) would be a term used for any story that starts at some point in the plot that is not "ab ovo" (Trans: The beginning, Lit: From the Egg) and requires the readers to press forward in the narrative to find out what happened just prior to the beginning,...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How to deal appropriately with an inappropriate sexual relationship
So a couple things, but the big problem is in the United States, the age of consent is usually 16, not 18 (It's 18 in California, which where most of the world's porn is filmed. It's also the home of a lot of writers of Crime Dramas). The most common age of consent in the U.S. is actually 16, but eac...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Should you only use colons and full stops in dialogues?
So from your example, it sounds like the scene is a lawyer is advising a client, so with that in mind I would write the sentence: > "You need to record every action you make from now on, otherwise the federal agents will arrest you for questioning," she recommended. Keep in mind, Dialog is less beh...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How can I hint that my character isn't real?
I would subtly manipulate the dialog so that your main can have scenes where the imaginary character and a real character are both talking and it seems like they are having the same conversation, but not really. For example, the imaginary character asks a question, with the next snip of the real char...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Real-world issues with using an alias
Both J.K. Rowling and K.A. Applegate are examples of people who used simple pseudonyms to write for a target audience (middle school boys) who wouldn't initially pick up their books if they realized the author was a woman, which their given names strongly hinted at. Both women wrote the two most succ...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How to differentiate between two people with the same name in a story?
John specifically has a wide array of cross-cultural appeal, originating from Hebrew and having a variant in just about every European and Near Easter language family. It's super easy to solve your problem: They aren't spelled the same way John in English has a varient spelling of Jon, most famousl...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: The unknown and unexplained in science fiction
Going of the "Lay person" comment, there are a lot of topics today where people may understand the fundamental basics of the system, but not the actual working mechanics. I recall a scene from the TV series "Transformers: Prime" where Jack (a human) is working on his science fair project about engine...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: How can I indicate that a particular relationship between two male characters is purely brotherly (Philia) rather than romantic (Eros)?
It's interesting that you identified Kirk and Spock as phillia as a lot of fan fiction terms are traced to Star Trek fandom having a Kirk Spok eros relationship as a core theme of Fan fiction. In fact in fan fiction the term "slash" fiction denotes that the work will deal with two characters in a rom...
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over 4 years ago
Answer A: Use of punctuation in song lyrics?
As a general rule, lyrics will be written with little punctuation. When at a line break, it's not uncommon to use a slash to note the line is breaking and then begin the next line with a capital letter, regardless of whether or not it is a new sentence. If I wrote the four lyrical lines to the iconic...
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almost 5 years ago
Answer A: Pronouns when writing from the point of view of a robot
@CortAmmon hit the nail on the head and your answer partly confirms this. This is a story that is being told from a robot's perspective. To whom is the Robot telling the story too? English speaking humans, and thus the robot would construct the story into a language that humans would understand and b...
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almost 5 years ago
Answer A: Do I have to mention my main character's age?
Almost every Animorphs book opens with the first person narrator explicitly saying that their only Personal Identifying Information they would give the reader was their first name and until the final book, they were identified vaguely as teenagers, but not yet of driving age (between 13-16) and were ...
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almost 5 years ago
Answer A: Magic is the twist
The best way to pull this off is that both the magical answer and mundane answer are plausible because the answer of "is it magic or scientifically explainable\ doesn't matter as the result would be the same. Consider the Climax of the Harry Potter series, where Harry is outwardly believed to be dea...
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almost 5 years ago
Answer A: I don't want to be introduced as a "Minority Novelist"
Of the three best selling book series for boys of an elemenatry/middle school age, all three were written by authors who syled their name thus: first name initial [full surname] (J.K. Rowling, K.A. Applegate, and R.L. Stein, in order of most success to least). Of those three, only Stein was a man. Bo...
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almost 5 years ago
Answer A: Character, plot, and setting conflicts
A good Setting vs. Plot conflict I always like to use to demonstrate this is the Disney Film "Mulan". The Setting is Ancient China and the Plot is "Mulan must defeat the leader of the Huns, Shan Yu." Seems simple, hell, I'm old enough to remember the original trailer for the film, which basically giv...
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almost 5 years ago
Answer A: Too eloquent characters
I have characters like this, and a lot of teen characters at that. There are teens who will talk like this (Nerds who read. Socially Awkward kids. Motivational speeches trying to sound important, debate team nerds, drama nerds, and occasionally class clowns who are mocking the older diction). One of...
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almost 5 years ago