Activity for Cyn
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer | — |
A: Pop star names and other famous people or characters Anyone can sue you for anything. If you're a regular person being sued by a wealthy one, or a large business, you will be crushed, even if you're in the right. It is legal to say things about public figures that are true. But truth is about facts, not about your interpretation of what they are doin... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Where can a new author sell the first chapter of a book? Short answer: You can't. It takes time to create longer works. Even experienced writers will go back and edit earlier chapters, move things around, etc. If you're not experienced, you may do this even more as you learn your craft. To publish a novel, including self-publishing, it needs to be compl... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Third person story, containing a first person backstory Who is telling this backstory? Is it a separate section, set apart from the rest of the book? Or does the narrator tell the story? It's fine to use first person for an entire novel, or for a piece of it, if it suits your purpose. One advantage to using both is that it's very clear to the reader tha... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to end a story without reaching a new status quo? > Slice of life describes the depiction of mundane experiences in art and entertainment. In theater it refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a narrative technique in which a seemingly arbitrary sequence of events in a character's life is presented, often lacking plot development, con... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should I start a new paragraph after a dialogue if the action is being taken by a new person? Yes. Not only should you start a new paragraph for every character, but you need to be clear about who is saying or doing what. You mention the excerpt involves 3 characters. We know the first person part is Nat, the narrator. And of course the parts you label as being from Arden are from that chara... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Are there very large format POD publishers? They exist. Though it depends where you are. A3 appears to be art book sized. > The A3 size print measures 29.7 x 42.0cm, 11.69 x 16.53 inches, if mounted 40.6 x 50.8cm, 15.98 x 20 inches. (ref) Why does it talk about mounting? Because it's a designation for art prints, not books. > A3 is a paper... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do I make my book longer? Write the length you need to tell your story. If it turns out to be a short story or a novella, so be it. Instead of taking longer to tell the story, maybe what you need is to tell a story that spans more time. Or one that looks at more points of view. But first, working on improving your writing... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Enigma Book with a money prize Legal issues depend on where you live and who your contestants are. In the US, there is a difference between sweepstakes, which are games of chance, and contests, which are games of skill. Your proposal is for a contest. Inc has written an excellent article outlining the various issues. For a priz... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How and when should I introduce my main character's superpowers? You'll need to establish that superpowers are part of your world early on. Whether it's magical realism, urban fantasy, or comic book standards, your novel needs to set the framework within the first few chapters. If you're showing other superpowered folks up front and just not revealing that your... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Many resources in one sentence: how to use references? In academic writing, this is appropriate. You don't want to do an entire paper like this but, yeah, those individual references are important. If this was a news article you could say: > Goodman, Wilson, Mann and other researchers have found evidence that such disparate things as exercise, laughing... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What sort of details do potential short story beta readers need? Beta readers can be helpful in a variety of ways. They will of course help you with the content of your work. But if you have other elements in place, include them too. For example, try to set at least a working title so the beta reader can weigh in on it. I would include the following: - Your full... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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Incorporating new people into a critique group I belong to a terrific critique group (writing group) that has dealt with a lot of attrition. We started with 6 people and currently have 4, one who joined after the first month or two. We also had another new person that didn't work out. Some people weren't a good fit but others left because they mo... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is no religion a bad thing? I find it odd and unusual for a world to be inhabited by sentient beings where no one ever mentions or relates to religion. But it is completely fine for your characters to be atheists or just not care enough about religion to mention it. Sometimes information about a world is so in the background ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is using too many different metres and rhyming schemes bad? Find yourself an audience. Here's a situation where it's impossible to guess based on your description. We have no way of knowing if your poem is a hot mess, a psychedelic journey, or an literary analysis adventure. Maybe it's brilliant, or maybe it just needs a good editor. So find friends and fa... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What exactly is a 'series' in indie publishing? Yes. A series is a sequence of related works under the same title (individual works/books/episodes can have their own names). A TV or novel series can be chronological pieces of the same story (Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter). Or it can be completely separate stories under the same umbrella (T... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is my story "too diverse"? The short answer is, there is no such thing as too much diversity! Especially when authorship comes from the community being portrayed. So many times mainstream (i.e., white) writers/producers/publishers will look at diversity in terms of matching percentages. So if black people make up 12% of the ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write in a more conversational tone? Get thee to a writer's group! Find yourself a group that meets in person (or by video or phone, if you must). Where you take turns reading your work out loud to each other. If that doesn't come together, find friends or family willing to be your audience. Still can't swing it? read the work out l... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should I change from past to present tense to state a fact that continues into the present and is unyielding? Yes, if the narrator is in the present telling a story about the past. The narrative is telling a story about something that has already happened. So it's in past tense. But then the narrative pulls you, the reader, aside to tell you something about the setting. And you know in this case it's just... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to refer to complex job titles in cover letters? Do it exactly the same way the company does it. If you know what job to apply for, it's because you saw it in an ad, on their website, or in another listing. The hyphen and the slash are used differently. The hyphen means "this job is for a data scientist doing dynamic pricing." The slash means ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Realistically incorporating trans/nonbinary characters It's extremely important for media to depict people out of the gender/sexuality mainstream as normal. So your best bet is to do exactly that: have a diversity of characters and show it all as perfectly normal. Most people don't talk about other people's trans/cis status unless 1) they're jerks or 2... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Dystopia that isn't cliche Your story sounds interesting. But even the best ideas can be awful when written up and some of the simplest, done-to-death, plots can be amazing. It's all in what you do with it. If a book sells well enough to make the author and publisher money, then there is something compelling about it. It mig... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Formating of table explanation in email to colleagues I would recommend a PDF. I normally believe in converting files to text (marked or unmarked) for emails because so many times that Word file or whatever is just a couple paragraphs that don't need to be in a separate file. In this case though, the precise formatting matters a lot. No matter how per... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Character is onscreen for three seconds I think you're fine. In a novel, mentioning a character is very much like showing a character. In the sense of how this character embeds himself in the reader's mind. Obviously, it matters how you mention/show a character, but not as much if it's the narrator describing them vs another character de... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Not projecting myself onto my characters It's okay to have a Blue Period. Picasso's lasted 4 years and was fueled by depression. He produced amazing paintings during this time and it was something he felt compelled to do. > It's making me bored with my writing and discouraged with myself, because I feel like I can no longer write a charact... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: The problem of the throwaway boyfriend The main character has to relinquish his old life. His boyfriend is just one part of that. What else is the MC giving up? - His friends - His family (they will stay his family but he can't see them or contact them very often) - His Sunday morning routine (crossword puzzles and walking to the corne... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Library of Congress filing: answering "intended for children or young adults" (This answer was written during the first iteration of the question. The author's changes invalidate much of my answer. My conclusion stands: this is not a juvenile book, but I could only base it on the information the author provided at the time. I leave it as is as because it still applies to the g... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to cite the place of a conference in Chicago manual of style? Author of Paper, A., and B. Author of Paper. Year. "Title of Paper." Paper presented at Title of Conference: Subtitle of Conference, Location, Date. https://doi.org/10.XXX/XXXXX.XX So in your case: Matt Baughman, Christian Haas, Rich Wolski, Ian Foster, and Kyle Chard. 2018, "Predicting Amazon Spot... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should I be myself and write what I really want even though it isn't getting much traction? Do you think teenage girls are too stupid to know when they're being pandered to? Do you think publishers of young adult fiction would not notice that an author is not familiar with the genre and looks down on it? If you are familiar with more than one genre and good at it then, sure, you might wan... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: A Market For Long Narrative Poetry? A common market for shorter pieces is anthologies. You didn't give a length but "long poetry" is probably still not novel length. Anthologies tend to have themes based on the subject of the work or the communities the author belongs to, or both. For example: - Science fiction stories by Iraqis -... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can I publish a book based on the Library of Babel? The idea that inspired you has a Wikipedia page! Let me narrow down your question from (basically): > Can I take another author's idea and base a book on it? to > Can I use a well-known setting and place my novel inside it? You aren't using Borges' characters or plots. It's not like writing a st... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Third Person Multiple POV in a single scene, how to refer each other if one character does not know the name of other character and vice versa There are different levels of 3rd person narration, so it depends. Your narrator might describe the scene like someone viewing a movie. Or the narrator might be omniscient. What yours sounds like is a narrator that goes inside the character's head and describes things as if they were in first person... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Do I need Permission for Acknowledgements or Reprinting Articles? Get permission from the copyright owner to republish. It's nice to ask the author too but contact whoever owns the copyright, which isn't always the original publisher, especially for an older work. Republishing includes putting it on your blog or even posting to a mailing list, though that gets fu... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should I change my method of indicating internal monologue (parenthesis) to something more conventional? Yes! Change it! When I saw the title my first thought was, do whatever you want, as long as it works. Then I read the question...and...it doesn't work. It's very distracting. If you use italics, you can take out the "he thought to himself" bits, which are generally clutter. Or you can do it in unm... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What are the chances that agents or publishers will accept my manuscript if there are some grammatical errors in it? No one will reject your manuscript because of one or two typos. But, yes, it needs to be in correct English (or whatever language you're using) with very few mistakes. This applies to your cover letters and other documents too. If you can't afford a professional editor, try to find one who will bart... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: A handful of gems I was wondering what you meant by Struggling with the number of themes in my work Because I think of themes as coming up organically and not being something you explicitly write. But now I wonder if you simply have too many ideas. No such thing, right? Unless you get bored and move on to the next i... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can I give a lecture about my book without disclosing my real name? Yes...but... Yes, of course you can use your pen name. Your audiences need never hear anything different. None of your marketing materials need give your real name. The issue comes when you need to do things officially. Say, you get booked for a lecture and they set up transportation or a hotel fo... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Do I quote the author or artist from a comic? MLA If you're doing an individual review, you should mention the entire creative team. Writers, co-writers, pencils, pens, colors, letters. Whoever is on the masthead. But for shorter citations, the general rule is to cite the writer and primary artist, sometimes with full names, sometimes last names. ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Short sentence(s) to be creative to ask Uber passenger to tip? Identify your situation with the plight of other workers deserving of tips People don't tip because they think you need the money. They tip because they understand your employer is not paying you a fair wage and that there is a social contract where customers make up the missing wages based on how ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: I noticed that several already-existing poems used the same highly specific puns and phrases that I used. Is this unintentional plagiarism on my part? How to plagiarize: 1. Deliberately steal someone's work. This is always ethically wrong and usually illegal too. Students who do this get expelled or otherwise punished. Authors who do this get legal repercussions and shunned. All deserved. This is not even close to what you are doing. 2. Accidenta... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: On Characters' Motivations You can have the murder be of someone the MC knows, or of a stranger, but they will be different stories. If the murder victim is someone the MC knows, the MC's intentions will always be clouded with revenge. That's not a bad motivation, it just may not be what you want. If the murder victim is a ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How far does using the same words from copy righted works go? You can't copyright a name, you can only trademark it (which is expensive). Chaos Realm seems pretty generic to me. After all, you did come up with it independently. Even being legal, I wouldn't using a place name that was really well known and specific to one work, unless you were setting it in th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is a section of a book published in a journal considered a journal source? If a work was published in more than one place, you only have to cite it once. You can pick which publication to cite. Edited to add comment from another answer: Original source vs secondary source applies to works that are quoted or described in another work. In this case, the very same article wa... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Flashforward Tense Sometimes What Works in a Movie Works in a Book If you have a chatty narrator, having her/him say "let's go back to the beginning" or "but I'm getting ahead of myself" or anything that indicates the time shift is totally fine. You can also put it into the chapter headers. "Many years ago..." ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Pseudonyms and Book signings Talk to the store Every bookstore will have an employee who sets up signings, meet and greets, readings, etc. Tell them you're the author of a book they sell and you're interested in doing that. Do you have a Fictitious Business Name registered with your county? If so, that would be enough to prov... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What do you call a self-liberated slave? I don't think there is a particular word because the actor is the former slave owner. He or she is the one who freed Tsidia. So your descriptions would be about how Tsidia influenced the action, even if Tsidia is the subject of the sentence. "Tsidia convinced her owners to set her free." Or, as obje... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Write an unnerving, yet likable, character (video game) Unnerving and insane are not the same thing. Unnerving is how the character makes you feel. A little uncertain, maybe even unsafe or suspicious. Insane is about the character's relationship to reality. If you want insane plus likable, then make him sweet and caring, but not quite all there. If you ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Transitioning between an Interrupted sleep and falling back into it again WITHOUT repeating material? Use the form of the comic to tell your story. This is a comic. A good artist will be able to show the transition back into sleep without a single word. Direct your artist (if it's not you) to draw a panel showing the character extremely exhausted as the bird either leaves the frame or fades into th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Effectively conveying an unreliable narrator One method would be to have her narrate things\ in a straight-forward way but intersperse it with flashbacks (she probably has PTSD given what she's been through) and/or nightmares. After she meets other people, their words and actions will contradict some of what your MC says. For example, they mig... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Secondary Dialogue I would set it off into its own lines and use italics. Since it will happen multiple times, the reader will assume that it's background and characters may or may not hear what's said (or even notice it). If you want to be clear who does and doesn't hear certain lines, you'll have to say so. > Luzia... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Glossary in my book A Glossary Is not a Substitute for Clear Writing If you were writing a nonfiction book where precise vocabulary was required, I'd say, yes, include a glossary! If you were writing a very detailed fiction book with a lot of references to words used in a particular culture, language, religion, or his... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |