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Posts by Cyn‭

464 posts
80%
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Q&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 publis...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A What can a novel do that film and TV cannot?

The main difference is the ability to be published. To break into TV, you need to live somewhere that produces a lot of TV shows (in the United States, you'd move to Los Angeles and try to hang ou...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 l...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 n...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 f...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Referring to different instances of the same character in time travel

Pick a name and go with it. If the fact of the new character being future Adrien isn't a secret from the reader, you don't have to worry about names that spoil the surprise. Use whatever name A...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 pe...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 r...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 t...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 someo...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 thei...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 af...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&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 ...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Naming a book in a language different from where it would be published: is it good?

I recently finished reading a novel in translation to English from Russian. The title was in Latin (in the original edition, the title was transliterated to Russian, but the English edition was in...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Can I bring back Planetary Romance as a genre?

There are two separate issues here: What do you call your story as you pitch it? How would your story be marketed? Although you tag marketing and use the word, you're asking more about the seco...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to write Arabic in dialogue for an English piece?

Unless your audience is bilingual, you always want to use the transliterated version. When you're dealing with alphabets that are very different (or in some languages, not alphabets at all), not t...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How can I make a non-linear timeline less confusing?

You have three issues to solve: There are two different worlds. The sequential nature of each world's chapters (that there are not gaps where the other world's chapters are). The two timelines ru...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How large should photos on my blog be?

I use the "medium" size in Wordpress, which is 500 px width and height proportional as required by the image. This fits across my entire column (depending on the monitor/window size/browser of cou...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How does one write from a minority culture? A question on cultural references

Absolutely. My own book is filled with references to Judaism and to American Jewish culture (the number 18 is one). In lots of those cases, it's explicit, but not always. I would venture to say ...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A Using a different POV just for the opening line

Yes, it's fine. I would set it off though. Italics might work. Or an indented blockquote style. Or a divider between that line and the rest of the story. You might also make it a fake quote. ...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How can I describe nervousness?

Talk to people about what happens when they get nervous so you have a strong database of ideas. And give every character a different set of reactions. The main character in the novel I'm working ...

posted 6y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to move back to main section after finishing a sub-section

Don't think of it as moving back to the main section. Instead, create a new subsection. 1.1.3 subsection 3 Or create a section called Conclusion. Better yet, make the part you call the main...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to secure my written work from being stolen or copied before publishing?

All the other answers are correct: copyright law protects your work even if it's not published and even if you haven't registered it in any way. This is true in the United States, the United Kingd...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do I find flaws in a character I'm building?

Ask his wife Either you're so much inside his head that you're not seeing him the way others do, or you're an outsider suffering from hero worship. You need to get into other people's heads and s...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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