Activity for Galastel
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation You're asking how a character, a creation of your imagination, can have free will. It's not easy for me to answer, because "they do". On a very fundamental level, that's what happens when I write. I 'find' my characters, I 'find out' who they are. I can look at an in-story event and say 'this is true... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Using font to highlight a god's speech in dialogue Visually distinguishing a character's dialogue is not a bad idea. Sir Terry Pratchett used this tool quite a lot. Most notably, his Death spoke in ALL CAPS, including small caps when needed. (Small caps make reading significantly easier than just all caps.) There was also a special font used for the ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How can I portray a character with no fear of death, without them sounding utterly bored? Psychopathy is characterised by persistent antisocial behaviour, impaired empathy and remorse. (source: Wikipedia) Your character needs to care for others. Watching a person get hurt, let alone killed, isn't easy. It should never become easy. That's something your character would respond to. That i... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to differentiate between two people with the same name in a story? In a written medium, your readers can only identify your characters by what you give them. We cannot "see" your characters. So, if at any point in the story there's a John, and then again there's a John, they're the same John, unless you give us something else to distinguish the two Johns. "Somethin... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How does a person get an entry on Britannica, Encyclopedia.com etc.? Like @celtschk says in a comment, traditional encyclopedias like Britannica have professional editors. It is their task to decide what gets an entry and what doesn't. This is different from Wikipedia, which is edited by anybody and everybody willing. Since traditional editors have only that many ho... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Don't look at what I did there How did Jack Sparrow escape that island he got stranded on? "Sea turtles". He escaped somehow, and he isn't going to tell us how. In fact, not telling us adds to his mystique. And he knows it, which is why he isn't telling us. Of course, there's an issue of POV here. Jack Sparrow isn't the POV chara... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: The unknown and unexplained in science fiction Your question makes me think first and foremost of Asimov's robots. We know how they work, right? There are the Three Laws. And they have a positronic brain. Wait, what? What on earth is a "positronic brain"? How is that even possible? What does that mean? When asked "why positrons", Asimov freely ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Spicing up a moment of peace Take a look at The Lord of the Rings as an example. Between the tense episode in Moria, that culminated with Gandalf's fall while the other characters escape, and the mounting tension of the Anduin which culminates with Boromir's death and the breaking of the Fellowship, there's not a passage, but th... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do I portray irrational anger in first person? To the person experiencing anger, it won't appear irrational. To them, there's a very good reason why they're angry, why they're infuriated. What you need is to show the reason. Now, the reason might not be what's right in front of them right now, causing the anger to appear irrational to the outsi... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Do I need to change the title of my book because it is similar to the Transformers Universe? 'Primus' means 'first' in Latin. Just as you cannot copyright the word 'first', you cannot copyright 'primus'. Same goes for 'prime'. Or any other common word. If in some fantasy universe, the entity that creates whatevers is called 'The King', I can still have kings and queens in my literature, and ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Should I use the words "pyromancy" and "necromancy" even if they don't mean what people think they do? The meaning of words is not set in stone. A word that used to mean one thing, can change over time to mean another. A hundred years ago, 'gay' used to mean 'merry'. Now it is no longer used in this sense. Sometimes the meaning of a word contradicts its own etymology. As an example, the French 'embras... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: To what extent should we fear giving offense? First, I would argue for the right to make mistakes It's not unheard of, surely, inadvertently saying something wrong? That's what "I'm sorry" is for? Our starting point is "normally people do not seek to offend". Well, why shouldn't it be enough? G.R.R. Martin made a similar comment in an interview... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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To what extent should we fear giving offense? Recently we have seen multiple questions on various aspects of political correctness. They have sparked some measure of disagreement, which is what I wanted to examine here. To what extent should we fear giving offense with what we write? To what extent should we, as writers, actively seek not to gi... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Compelling story with the world as a villain @Monica and others talk about Man vs. Environment stories. Since that has been explored, let me take your premise in a different direction. Another way by which the world might be a compelling villain is if it is guided by a malevolent god. If the cards are stacked against your character, if their l... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Author and Illustration owner Not a lawyer. You paid an illustrator to provide artwork for your book. You (supposedly) own the right to publish the artwork - that's what you paid the artist for. But that doesn't make you the illustrator of the work. You are not an author/illustrator. You are an author. The illustrator would need... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue? The trope you're looking for is referred to as phonetic accent, or Funetik Aksent. That is, spelling out words as they are spoken by a particular character, rather than they way they should be written. This is a trope you should be very wary of using. It makes the text significantly harder to read. ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Avoiding racist tropes in fantasy First of all, learn about the fantasy species you want to write about You want to populate your world with the traditional fantasy species, but your own perception of them appears to be based on only a few pop-culture reference points. As an example, you talk of dreadlocks-wearing orcs as if this wa... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Are illustrations in novels frowned upon? There are exceptions to the "no illustrations" trend. For example, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel is filled with black-and-white illustrations reminiscent of the wood engravings that would have accompanied 19th-century books. This is in line with the novel's general style, a tribute t... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: My scenes seem too fast You say that in your head there are pauses in the dialogue, but in the text they just aren't there. Well then, insert the pauses. > ‘How terrifying!’ said Frodo. There was another long silence. The sound of Sam Gamgee cutting the lawn came in from the garden. > ‘How long have you known this?’ aske... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Does each writer have a unique writing style? Neil Gaiman writes: > Don't worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can't help doing. If you write enough, [...] you'll have a style, whether you want it or not. (Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats, A Speech to Professionals Contemplating Alternative Employment, given at Pro... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is there such a thing as too inconvenient? The twin tropes you are referring to are Deus ex Machina and Diabolus es Machina. In both cases an event comes out of nowhere, not foreshadowed, to effect a drastic change. Both tropes are frowned upon. For example, Marion Dane Bauer in her book on writing, would say to her writing students "If you ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Do living authors still get paid royalties for their old work? In the US, an author holds the copyright to his work for all his life, and his heirs hold it for 70 years after his death, at which point the work becomes public domain. (source) In other countries the number of years after the author's death may vary, but I do not know of a single country nowadays w... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to deal with foreign language in dialogue? Don't, under (almost) any circumstances write a Roman-script foreign language "the way it is pronounced". It is not helpful to anyone. If I (as your reader) don't speak Spanish, the text is gibberish to me whether it is rendered in proper Spanish, or in "the way it is pronounced". ("Romanisation" is... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What kind of name should a fantasy author go by? I do not know the source of that claim you heard, but I think you're taking it too literally. Generally, most authors just use their name. There's nothing about the name "J.R.R. Tolkien" or "Terry Pratchett" or "Ursula Le Guin" that's particularly related to speculative fiction, except after the fact... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Ending a line of dialogue with "?!": Allowed or obnoxious? I just ran a search on all of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files for the '?!' mark. Why this series in particular? 1. It's modern 2. Stylistically, I expected to find '?!' there. 3. I had it on my computer, so I could Ctrl+f Here are the results: in 17 books (15 novels + 2 short stories collections) the p... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Does writing regular diary entries count as writing practice? There is a distinction that needs to be drawn here: are you talking about practice that helps you improve your writing, or are you talking about the kind of practice you can put in a CV to help you get a job in journalism or something similar? If you're looking for something to put on your CV, "I wr... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What's the point of writing that I know will never be used or read? For me, writing is a passion. Not writing is an impossibility. There are stories in my mind; I need to tell them. I need to find out where they go, how they go, what they mean. I have something in mind when I start a story, but it changes, mutates, I do not fully understand it until it is written and... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How do I improve my knowledge of English well enough to write in it? To improve your mastery of a language, you need to immerse yourself in it, as much as you can. This doesn't necessarily mean travelling to a location where the language is spoken, though that would certainly help. Here are some other things you can do. The more you do, and the more often, the higher ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Do I need to start off my book by describing the character's "normal world"? In a story that isn't set in our normal here-and-now, be it fantasy, science fiction, historic fiction, or something else, you need to establish what's normal for your setting, and what isn't. As an example: aliens land in the local spaceport - is it an "inciting incident", or are they just regular t... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to describe accents? Simply telling, e.g. > he said with a heavy Gujarati accent would be my solution, but you say that isn't enough for you. Which is fair. What is the most characteristic aspect of the accent you wish to describe? What would stand out most, and make it most recognisable? Is it the way a certain vowel... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A torrent of foreign terms I am writing a short story, about a particular field with multiple specific terms, none of which are in English. (Specifically, I'm writing about bullfighting, but the question could apply to other fields.) My POV character lives that particular field, so he would be using the proper terms, not more... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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Using quote as title - disadvantages There are multiple examples of works of fiction using for their title a quote from another famous work: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and more. The advantages are clear: by means of the quote, one can hint at the work's subtext, say something about the w... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Can a fight scene, component-wise, be too complex and complicated? Let's take a look at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the Lord of the Rings: First, we have the Rohirrim. Among them are Theoden, Éowyn, Éomer and Merry. Then we have Minas Tirith, with its various forces, and with Gandalf and Pippin as focal point characters. There's the events inside the city ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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Author changing name Let us suppose an unmarried female author. She publishes something. Then she gets married, and chooses to change her surname to her husband's. Obviously, she can choose not to change her surname. And she can choose to publish under her maiden name, using it as a pseudonym of sorts. But let us suppos... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to display a duet in lyrics? This is how Tolkien solves a similar problem in The Lord of the Rings: > ENT. > When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough; > When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow; > When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air, > Come back t... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: English - Acceptable use of parentheses in an author's name If your editor says something might look unprofessional, you should listen to your editor. Your editor is a professional, whose task is precisely to make your work appear at its best. We, on the other hand, are a bunch of internet amateurs with good intentions. As @ArkensteinXII mentions in a commen... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What are the advantages and disadvantages of copying writing styles? Something nobody has yet mentioned: you might want to write your story as a tribute to another work. For example, Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald is a tribute to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. It is in the language, the style, the way the story is told. At the same time, it is unmistakably ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Can we use other things than single-word verbs in our dialog tags? In English, the dialogue tags you want to be using most of the time are "said" and "asked". "Answered"/"replied" is also OK. Those dialogue tags are transparent, as it where - our mind slides off them, we do not linger. You can add some nuance, if you need: "he said with a smile" or "he said angrily... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What are good ways to improve as a writer other than writing courses? The best way to improve as a writer is to write. Just write. Then write some more. Then look at what you've written critically, ask others to read and comment, then rewrite and write some more. Courses are a systematised way of doing the above. If having someone tell you "write!" helps you, go ahead... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How can I Include a verbatim passage in my fiction without plagiarizing it? Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Forest House is a lose retelling of Belini's opera Norma. Several hymns were taken from the opera verbatim, something done as tribute to the source material. Zimmer Bradley states all this in a short author's note in the beginning of the novel. As @CrisSunami states in a c... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Where to find primary sources for getting into historical character? (voicing) Here's a thing you need to consider, a frame challenge if you will. When setting your story in the 1950s, or in the 1920s, or even in the 1800s, your characters can speak the way people spoke back then. In fact, we rather expect them to. But if you set your novel in Shakespeare's time, and one uned... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: In which language does the Russian mafiosi speak in my English novel? My answer to your other question, here, should also answer this one. In brief, English is the language you're writing the novel in, so English is the language you're writing their dialogue in. English is the only language you can expect your readers to read. If some characters are speaking in Russia... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do I compensate for lack of knowledge about foreign accents and takling styles? Whether the novel is set in Russia, or in the Middle Ages, or somewhere in Alpha Centauri, you are writing it in English. Whether your characters are "really" speaking Russian, Old English, or a tongue so completely different we might not even recognise it as speech, English is the language you're wr... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do I know when and if a character requires a backstory? First and foremost, every character requires a backstory in your mind. You need to know who they are , why they act in a certain way, how they would respond to new situations, etc. Once you have that backstory, you can decide how much of it will be revealed to the reader, at what point of the story,... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do I show and not tell a backstory? Building on Amadeus's answer, what you want to avoid is your character monologuing his backstory. Sometimes, a monologue can be done. If that story is gripping, and the scene is such that it makes sense for one character to be telling a story uninterrupted. For example, if two characters are sitting... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to foreshadow to avoid a 'deus ex machina'-construction You needn't reveal that the character has the ability, but you need to reveal the fact that the ability exists. Otherwise, indeed, this is a Deus ex Machina. How you reveal the existence of the ability is up to you. Maybe someone recounts a legend. Maybe it's part of a history lesson. Maybe it is ev... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How can I convert a linear narrative into a branching narrative? Creating a branch is the easy part To create a branch, as you read the book take note of every choice the character makes. Map those out - what that choice leads to, what does that in turn lead to, and so on. Then, consider what could happen if the character chose instead to do something else inste... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Synopsis for a village full of characters What is your book about, really? Not "a Devon village". Is it about relationships? Is it about the skeletons in people's closets? Is it about the tiny day-to-day bits of kindness people do for each other? Answer to yourself what your book is really about, then structure your synopsis around that. Fo... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What is a good way to come up with original world building ideas? I will answer this question quoting Neil Gaiman. Here is his complete answer to the question "where do you get your ideas?". A particularly relevant excerpt: > You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other pe... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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Sci-fi change: Too much or Not enough I am in the process of editing a short story. It is science fiction of the "if this goes on" kind: I take a social trend I see, and paint its event horizon - a troubling future. 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are classical examples. I have received two seemingly contradictory critiques from beta readers: o... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |