Activity for Cyn
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit | Post #39512 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
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A: Ads for this community Awesome work, Paulster2! I upvoted on Writing and Worldbuilding, because I don't belong to the other sites. You might also consider one on History, since that's a place where people writing historical fiction would frequent (like me). It's passed the threshhold of 6 votes on Worldbuilding and is... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39219 |
Okay, I'm here.
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— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is it the right call to title my romance a 'legend'? Legends can be told in first person. Some myths from Ancient Greece, sections of the Christian Bible, Biblical Psalms, The Story of Sinuhe (from Middle Kingdom Egypt), and many others are first person narratives. But you're asking specifically about a first person narrative by the character who is ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to plausibly write a character with a hidden skill Sometimes characters surprise you. And that's okay. You're absolutely right to worry about a deus ex machina situation where a solution comes out of the blue with no rhyme or reason. This is the sort of thing that annoys readers, and for good reason. But this is a character whose past is not well ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Writing about real people - not giving offence By inviting the relevant people (or their families) to your creative team. Many books and movies are made "with the cooperation of" so and so. This can mean a single interview, or just permission to to use certain materials, or it can involve multiple interviews or bringing in the person to the set ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to convey the anatomy of a humanoid race? Establish their winglessness before you establish their method of gestating children. You're absolutely right that this is an easier task when you have a character who is from the culture of the reader. It's also fairly easy if the narrator takes the reader's perceptive when describing the aliens. Y... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to identify whether a publisher is genuine or not? Anthologies are often different from other publishing. It is common for small publishers or even individuals to put together a call for an anthology to include any short work: comics, artwork, poems, short stories, essays, even novellas. The author never pays the publisher for this. It is normal for ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How do I introduce dark themes? Foreshadowing is your friend. Your example of Harry Potter isn't quite right. Chapter One is titled The Boy Who Lived. Now that's a bit ominous. Magic is hinted at on page 1\ and is outright on page 2. "You-Know-Who" is first mentioned on page 5. By page 11, when the name Voldemort is first mentione... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Replacing Amazon's ISBNs You are allowed to use new ISBN stickers on existing books. > As defined by the ISO Standard, the ISBN publisher prefix (or "root" of the ISBN) identifies a single publisher. If a second publisher subsequently obtains an ISBN from the assigned publisher's block of ISBNs, there will be no change in t... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Research Paper Summary: How much should be citations versus original thought? When I was a graduate student teaching undergraduates how to write research papers, the real problem was over-quoting. Students would quote or paraphrase large amounts of other people's work and not do much original writing. It was more stringing the quotes into something more or less coherent. A (g... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Correct way of Citing References in a writing a Non-Fiction book? How and where you cite depends entirely on your audience. For school reports and academic/scientific papers, you use formal citations both in the body of the text and in footnotes or endnotes. You're writing a popular science book. Formal citations will slow down the reader and probably turn most of... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to deal appropriately with an inappropriate sexual relationship Tell it in narration. You have plenty of opportunity to show this character's social pathology in her adult life. And plenty of material to do it with. This establishes her personality and the lengths she's willing to go to get what she wants. The purpose of including these events in her childhood ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How much should I pay the copyright holder for the right to translate a book and sell copies? After reading the edits and clarifications and other answers, my suggestion is that you approach this in a similar way to publishing a book in general. Offer royalties on sales of the book plus an advance. The way advances works is they're a guarantee of payment, not in addition to royalties. For e... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What makes an ending "happy"? A happy ending is about the emotional response the work as a whole evokes in the reader (or viewer). A sad ending or any other type would be the same. It's the state you've reduced the audience to at the end. There are no quantitative measures because no one's journey involves ticking boxes. Every ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How do we know if a dialogue sounds unnatural without asking for feedback? Sometimes you don't. You can (and should) read it out loud to yourself. But there really isn't a substitute for having other people listen to it. In my critique group, we read a portion of our piece when we present. Sometimes I find myself cringing at my dialogue. Stuff that sounded so good in my he... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Can I include personal experiences in nonfiction? The short answer is yes, you can include this type of material. But it really depends on your audience and the scope of the book. You may not want to do it. If you're writing a very fact-based formal history, it would be odd to suddenly jump to an anecdote about eating fruit salad while flying. If y... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation This makes sense to me because my characters act in very similar ways. Have you ever been in a novel situation in your own life where you did something unexpected? Maybe you intervened when someone else was being bullied or threatened. Maybe you kept perfectly calm as the car you were driving sudden... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Don't look at what I did there Skipping scenes is usually quite welcome in a novel. Sometimes you don't want to see every step. But the amount of skipping you propose is pretty jarring. You will break your readers out of their immersion in your world if you do something like that. Especially if you do it over and over. The way to... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Autobiography vs Perspective You have two choices here. If the object is truly inanimate and there are no surprises, then you are writing a history of the object. If the object is anthropomorphized (think Disney talking teacups), you can call it a biography. If you are writing in first person from the point of view of the obje... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Should I stick with American terminology in my English set young adult book? If you're writing for an American audience, with an American publisher, then use an American dialect for your narration. But... your character is living in England. Whether she's British or an immigrant or a visitor, she's going to be exposed to the local dialect. She will use local terms when appro... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Is it confusing to name a chapter after a non-POV character? Chapter names serve many purposes so, as long as your choice is one that fits with other chapter names, it's fine. If you always named the chapter after the POV character then you had one named after a non-POV character, it would be confusing. But if you regularly named other chapters after events o... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Can I say this about real countries in my fiction? Alternative history is a mainstay of speculative fiction. Redrawing countries' borders is very often a part of that. Sometimes countries that exist in the real world are missing. Sometimes new countries are added. Heck, even real history can make changes that dramatic in less than a decade. You're a... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: My scenes seem too fast Grab a friend or family member and print out the scene so you each have it on paper. Ask the other person to read it out loud, acting it out to some degree. Was there a pause in your head that your reader just missed? Circle it on your copy. Have your partner take one character while you take the ot... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Where should question marks be put in fragmented lines of poems? Put question marks when you have rising intonation. I suggest you read your poem out loud. Do this multiple times and really do it out loud, not just in your head. Try it with and without the question marks. Or try them in different places. Punctuation is a guide for how to speak writing out loud (... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What's the point of writing that I know will never be used or read? > When I was in high school, a friend and I wandered together downtown and came across a psychic's booth. Out of curiosity, we stepped inside. We were both writers, she told us. My friend wrote for herself and it didn't matter to her if others saw it. But I was different. I wrote for others to see. N... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Use of punctuation in song lyrics? One generally doesn't read lyrics like poetry. Sure, you can, but it's not as common. One reads lyrics to understand a song. If you're reading to understand how to sing a song, punctuation is particularly important. Because it helps you with phrasing. Phrasing is how you divide up the music. Where ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: English - Acceptable use of parentheses in an author's name The given name I've been known by since High School is not the same as the name on my birth certificate or driver's license, but it is, like yours, a known nickname for my legal name. I used to use my legal name on nearly every document but, starting a few years ago, have started using my nickname i... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: A pulse, a throb, and a beat Focus on the character's experience. Your narrator feels distant from your character and that's why you're struggling with word choice (and I realize you are only giving us short bits from your narrative here). Get in there and tell the reader about the character's emotional state. He heard a stran... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How can I Include a verbatim passage in my fiction without plagiarizing it? Older meditations are almost certainly in the public domain. In the United States, anything published before 1924 is in the public domain as the copyrights have expired. Newer works may also have expired copyrights, depending on the circumstances. While copyright law varies from country to country (... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Multiple lines of dialogue and action from a single character The general rule is to start a new paragraph for dialogue or action by a new character. Everything you wrote here is Lisa describing and thinking about what Jack has said or done. So, yes, it can go into one paragraph. But it doesn't have to. If you feel more comfortable breaking up, then break it u... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Technical term for written dialogue that mimics the speaker's "sound"? Phonetic spellings. Or something similar to that. Phonetic rendering. Spelling phonetically. Etc. A few resources for you: - How to convey accents in fiction writing: Beyond phonetic spelling - Funetik Aksent - Dialogue: Writing Dialects and Accents (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Pronouns when writing from the point of view of a robot While it's okay to gender your robots if you really feel the need, it's not necessary. The first version with "it" instead of "he" read just fine. It's a bit awkward writing it, as we're trained to use "he" or "she" when speaking of beings with volition, but reading it went smoothly. Because you make... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What's the proper way of indicating that a car has reached its destination during a dialogue? You're running into problems because you're putting too much focus on the details of the transition, instead of just marking it as a transition and moving into the next scene. Try using a single reference to the arrival. For example: > "Yeah, it might be true," he said as he gazed out the window. "... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is it bad style if the personal first person narrator of a story dies during said story? If you're internally consistent this can work. A variety of books are first person, or a third person style that shows the character's thoughts enough that it has the intimacy of first person, but the character doesn't survive the book (or series). There are countless examples. I just finished a tr... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Sci-fi change: Too much or Not enough Every reader comes at a work with a different perspective. One reader may not even notice the elements that are central for another. The only way to find out if your two beta readers were focusing on different things is to ask them. When a society changes fundamentally, especially when leading to dy... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Building a scene and readability Each chapter will open on something that sets the scene to come. A descriptive paragraph (or other length) that focuses on the setting is a perfectly legitimate way to do this, but it's not required. You can also open with dialogue, or character thoughts, or an action, for example. - If you have mu... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to avoid unconsciously copying the style of my favorite writer? Go ahead and copy his style. Murakami is a brilliant writer who draws heavily on other writers (as does every writer, whether they realize it or not). Honestly, if you can manage to write so well that people compare you to him, you will have accomplished something amazing. It's hard enough to write... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write references? If the authors of the website produced the data, then cite them like you would the authors of a work published on paper. If the website is a journal, it will have a name that you can also use in the citation. If the authors of the website are writing about data that someone else produced, you will n... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Self-Publishing Chapters In the comics world, this is normal. Each issue (the standard is 22 pages, not including the cover and publisher additions) comes out separately, either as an e-comic or on paper, or both. After at least 4 issues, but generally a year's worth, which can be 4-12 issues, the comic is collected into a ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Storyboarding Approaches for the Non-Artistic What you're looking for is a non-traditional outline. Now a regular outline is very linear and has headings and subheadings and may either: 1. Bring on terrifying flashbacks of high school English. 2. Just be too linear for what you need in this particular moment. But an outline doesn't have to be... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Do we have to introduce the character's name before using their names in a dialogue tag? The only issue to worry about is that your reader knows who is speaking and can remember who the characters are scene to scene. How you accomplish this is up to you. That being said, it's a little weird to have "the man" and "John" so close together. So I'd shake it up slightly. An easy way would b... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to tell readers that I know my story is factually incorrect? Every book is going to play around with reality to some degree, though some do it more than others. Every case is different. Is this a story that would end up on a "I can't believe they survived!" style TV show? In my own book, I've included one of my favorite songs. But the song didn't exist in th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How important are the author's mood and feelings for writing a story? I've heard of Method Acting. But never Method Writing. There are two approaches to portraying a character on film or stage. Method Acting, where the actor gets into character by living like the character, duplicating emotions of the character, or otherwise emotionally identifying with the charac... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can I modify and turn my published short stories into a novel? You can't plagiarize yourself. It's actually pretty common for writers to turn a short story (or several) into a novel. Your only issues are about copyright. If you self-publish the stories, you of course retain the copyright. If you use a traditional publisher (including magazines, websites, etc),... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to not confuse readers with simultaneous events? This rapid scene-switching works in film because you can establish exactly where you are and who you are with in an instant, with a framing shot or something else that recalls one. In a novel, you either have to re-describe the setting or you need shortcuts for recalling it. Lauren Ipsum's example ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is 7000 words too long for a chapter? I put a paragraph break in your question as an edit, but it's still a huge block of text (now two huge blocks). Chapter dividers are a grander version of that. They give your reader a chance to catch her/his breath. Don't make it hard for them to take a break. A lot of people like to stop at the end... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How would you write the dialogues of two characters talking in a chat room? Write it as it is. When you write dialogue, you don't write it up as formal English (or another language). You write what the characters say. If someone squeals or rolls their eyes or starts choking, you'd narrate that as well. Written communication is similar to speech in that what's said is said ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: 1st person addressing a narrator I'm in agreement with Amadeus here. It's just not a technique that is going to work. I'm trying to think of an exception, and I can't. Already you're messing with things by having the 1st person narration know what's in Jason's head. Since the main character is telling this part of the story, s/he s... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What is a self expression article called? They're usually just called essays. Though in our modern age we often use names related to the platform. So on a blog, they're posts or blog posts. As Zeiss Ikon points out, in a newspaper, they're called opinion pieces. If they're written by newspaper staff, they're editorials. In a magazine, they'... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |