Activity for Galastel
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How to organize distinct topics in personal letters to friends and family? Writing to friends and family, you can dispose with formality. You don't need a "structure". "Stream of consciousness" is how such letters were written before computers, before you could rearrange what you have already written. That's how informal letters are written still. I would start a letter wi... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is a fighting a fallen friend with the help of a redeemed villain story too much for one book A short story has limited space, you have to limit yourself to a few characters and one conflict. A novel is not like that. In a novel you can have plots and subplots, a multitude of characters, you can tell a story that is complex and multifaceted. That's the great strength of a novel. In your stor... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: In a script how can I signal who's winning the argument? I agree with @Ash's answer regarding the fact that you can show a lot with body language. I would disagree with him however regarding what "winning" and "losing" would look like. Being excessively assertive, "attacking", losing composure in an argument - those are signs of losing. Without even under... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: If you are beginner when it come to writing, should you be pantser? Or plotter? One doesn't "decide" to be a plotter or a discovery-writer ("pantser" is not considered a polite term in writing circles). One is one or the other, or somewhere on the scale between the two. Some writers cannot write unless they've planned everything ahead and know where they're going. Some plan mai... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What language to write in for a beginner wanting to write fiction? The answer to your question depends on your proficiency with English: to what extent you're comfortable writing in English, to what extent you enjoy writing in English compared to Swedish. Do not discount the last part: if you do not enjoy the process, what are you doing it for? There is more than o... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: The seven story archetypes. Are they truly all of them? The archetypes are a descriptive framework created by scholars in order to describe stories. Someone had a theory, says every story fits into one of those archetypes. Any story you give them, they will fit it into one of those archetypes, even if it squeaks a little. For my part, there are stories I... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Writing Longer Flashbacks I am not aware of a "common practice" - writers are fickle beasts who tend to disregard rules. But there's nothing that says the progression of your story needs to be "linear unless marked otherwise". The first example that comes to my mind is The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. First chapter of the... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Character Arcs - What if the character doesn't overcome the big lie, flaws or wounds? A character coming to understand that what they want is impossible and instead learning to live with what they have, is a perfectly reasonable character arc. The character overcomes something (wishing for the impossible), learns something, while their life is not perfect, it surely is somewhat bette... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Do I have to mention my main character's age? There are a lot of things you don't mention in your story. You don't mention how many times a day your MC uses the toilet. You don't mention how many beauty marks she has on her body. You probably don't mention the colour of her t-shirt. You only mention the things that are important. If a characte... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Trivial non-dark twist in dark fantasy I would like to offer a frame challenge: you're asking "will X make my story not fit the 'dark fantasy' sub-sub-genre". I say, write your story, make it a good one, then think what genre or sub-genre it fits. Does the twist you're planning make your story a good story? Neil Gaiman says "Fiction is t... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Has anyone ever written a novel or short story composed of only dialogue? The short story Orange by Neil Gaiman, from his collection Trigger Warning takes your idea one step further: it's framed as a subject's responses to an investigator's written questionnaire. The questions aren't even there - only the answers. It starts: > 1. Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsey. > > 2. ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to tell readers that I know my story is factually incorrect? Sometimes writers make mistakes. Sometimes they didn't know something. Sometimes they chose to ignore a fact because it got in the way of their story. This is so common, TV tropes has a whole family of tropes related to the phenomenon. Of particular interest to you would be Artistic License - Medicin... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How important are the author's mood and feelings for writing a story? It is not important, unnecessary, and in fact utterly impossible. You need to put yourself in the character's shoes, imagine how he feels, write that, try to evoke emotions in the reader. It helps if you have ever in your life experienced something similar, so you have a reference point. But writing... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is it okay for a chapter's POV to shift as it progresses? There are two questions hiding in your question, 1. Can the POV character not be the character who's most active? Consider Sherlock Holmes as an example. Watson is the POV character, the story is told in first person by Watson, it's Watson's opinions and emotions we share. But Watson is passive. It... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is straight-up writing someone's opinions telling? You're taking "show, don't tell" too strictly. There's no rules in writing - they're more what you'd call guidelines. If you're in doubt about a passage, write it both ways. Then see which one feels more natural, and which one feels weird and convoluted. If you're finding yourself writing in an unna... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: I gave my characters names that are exactly like another book. Is it a problem? The answer to your question depends on how strongly the set of names is associated with the preexisting work of fiction. Not just the individual names, but the set of names together. For example, individually Romeo and Juliet are common enough names, if you set your story in Italy. However, if you n... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to deal with moral/legal subjects in writing? > I don't get only supporting the freedom of the kind of speech you like. If speech needs defending, it's probably because it's upsetting someone. (Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats, The PEN Awards and Charlie Hebdo) As @JRE points out, if you're challenging the status quo, if you're pointi... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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How do I apply Hemingway's dialogue techniques to my own writing? I open Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises at random (chapter 9). > 'I haven't seen you since I've been back,' Brett said. > 'No.' > 'How are you, Jake?' > 'Fine.' > Brett looked at me. 'I say,' she said, 'is Robert Cohn going on this trip?' > 'Yes. Why?' > 'Don't you think it will be a bit r... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How can I portray a resentful character without making them overtly angry? There is a myriad of different ways your sergeant could be feeling and acting regarding his subordinate. - He could value his former sweetheart's happiness, and thus be protective of her husband, for her sake. Both Karl May's character Winnetou and the Star Trek Jean-Luc Picard have this in their b... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Any Tips On Writing Extended Recollection In A Novel A crucial question: does the psychiatrist contribute anything to the story, or is he mainly the setting, the excuse as it where, for your protagonist to tell the story? If the psychiatrist makes no meaningful contribution, you can have considerable chunks of your story in first-person narration, no ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do I present a future free of gender stereotypes without being jarring or overpowering the narrative? Men do wear skirts: kilts, sarongs, hakamas, fustanellas... If your world is culturally diverse, any and all of those might have become common enough. In sci-fi stories in particular, new fashions is something we take in our stride. But skirts are not really the focus of your question, they're just ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Can a successful book series let the bad guy win? It is perfectly fine for your story to end with the "bad guy" winning. Consider for example George Orwell's 1984: > He loved Big Brother Complete and utter defeat. 1984 is one of last century's masterpieces. @Wetcircuit mentions tragedy in a comment, for good reason. Tragedy does not necessarily i... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to write a convincing religious myth? One element of religious texts is the antiquated language. Since the text has been canonised, it has not changed while the language moved on. If you look at the Book of Esther as an example, it is very much "just a story". God's name isn't mentioned once in it. And the Book of Lamentations is five i... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to convert dialogue in to paragraph? First of all, what do you mean by "taking inspiration from a movie"? If you mean copying the dialogue from a movie line for line, you're not allowed to do that. That's plagiarism. I would also question your statement regarding "having no experience with married life". You might not be married yourse... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Why am I getting a strange double quote (“) in Open Office instead of the ordinary one (")? You need to go to Tools - Autocorrect - Autocorrect Options - Localised Options. There you can pick the kind of double quotes and single quotes you like. (Source. Note the source tries to do the exact opposite - get the curly quotation marks. Shouldn't make a difference though.) (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is a lack of character descriptions a problem? Since your novel is already practically finished, you can ask your beta readers if no character descriptions works. Ultimately, that's the only way you can really know if something works or not. As others have pointed out, having no physical description of your characters can theoretically work. As ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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Helping my beta readers help me My beta readers are family and friends - people who read a lot, but do not write. They are people whose opinion I trust, and who are genuinely trying to be helpful. (And I haven't found a writing group.) Here's the problem: sometimes the critique I get is: "I understand the character's motivations, ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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Too eloquent characters Here's a critique I've received more than once: "your character talks like a character from a book. He's too eloquent, nobody really talks like that, unless they grew up in a library." Now, to some extent, characters not talking like we really do is an acceptable break from reality: interjections, p... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do I write "Show, Don't Tell" as a person with Asperger Syndrome? You say other's emotions are clear to you when people are giving verbal hints about them - when they're saying "this is fascinating" etc. This is one tool you could use in your writing. You can hint at emotions through the way a character talks. Commas and repetitions stress what is important; a cha... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Should I "tell" my exposition or give it through dialogue? The thing that is often unnatural about giving exposition in dialogue is that both people having the dialogue should already be aware of what is being said. To solve that problem, you can either introduce a character who would reasonably not be aware of the situation, or you can tell that exposition ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to make a setting relevant? @DPT's answer is great (+1), but let me add one more element to it: it's not enough that your characters interact with the setting. There needs to be a reason why your characters are there in the first place, the setting needs to affect the story. Your characters are in an office. Why? How does it a... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do you build a story from a world? Think of the real world, the one in which we live. How do you grow a story out of it? The answer is there's plenty of stories, it's just a question of what interests you, what moves you, what kind of story you wish to tell. Your secondary world is the same. There are myriads of stories that can be ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: I wrote a scene that the majority of my readers loved. How do I get back to that place while writing my new book? You write. If what comes under your fingers is not great, if you're not satisfied, you rewrite. It's easier to find what needs to be improved once you have something, than finding the perfect scene while staring at a blank page. You have no "inspiration"? Write anyway. Inspiration will come. I would... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How can I add depth to my story or how do I determine if my story already has depth? @MatthewDave suggests asking yourself what your story is about. I would go farther: ask yourself what is the meaning of your story , what it is you're trying to say. If you're saying nothing at all, then no, your story doesn't have much depth. And at this point, it's too late to change that - you'd ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Adding depth to two-dimensional heroes from myths You are mistaken in your basic assumption regarding what gives characters depth. If heroic Beowulf is in your story secretly a bad guy, that in and of itself doesn't make him three-dimensional. That just makes him a two-dimensional bad guy instead of a two-dimensional good guy. What makes a characte... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to make the POV character sit on the sidelines without the reader getting bored You have multiple options. - You can, as @Amadeus says, rewrite, so your character can be in the battle. - You can have somebody recount the battle to your character after the fact, with your character reflecting bitterly on not having been there, and having been unable to affect things. In this cas... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to detach yourself from a character you're going to kill? You don't detach yourself from the character. On the contrary - you let yourself feel the pain of her death, experience the loss, and you pour all of that onto the page. When a character dies, it should matter. It should be a punch in the gut for your audience. That can only be achieved if you care ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to create a plot given theme and settings? You have a world with a Problem. That's your setting. Why does the Problem matter to the character? How does it affect him? Your character must interact with the Problem - that's what the story is. It follows that the more intimately the character is familiar with the Problem, the more he is affected... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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20 Minutes into the Future - problem with setting the period I have just finished a short story, set in what is known as 20 Minutes into the Future - a time frame that's only a little into the future from our own. There is a change from modern times, but it is sociological rather than technological. I opened with the element that's different, set it and the p... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: In a professional email you need to quote something from a business document. How do you write this? According to APA 6th Edition Citation Style, > When a work’s author is designated as “Anonymous,” cite in text the word Anonymous followed by a comma and the date: (Anonymous, 2010) If, instead, you're citing a newspaper article, journal article, or website with no author, give the article title an... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Stereotypical names In every country, some names are particularly common: 'John' in the UK, 'Juan' in Spain, 'Ivan' in Russia. Those names are common almost to the point of being stereotypical (consider 'John Doe'). If I have no more than one or two characters from a particular place, is it bad form to use those extrem... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Famous mistranslations - correct them? Often enough works of literature, particularly old classics, receive renewed translations. Sometimes, the older translation might contain mistakes. And sometimes, the work being an old classic, the mistakes have become famous as part of the work of literature. For example, English-speakers know that... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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When does a phrase change from "quote" to "expression coined by"? "The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry" comes from Robert Burns's To a Mouse. It is a commonly used expression, though the "mice and men" part is often omitted nowadays. In fact, not every person using the expression would be aware of its provenance. "The burned hand teaches best" comes fr... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Pre-modern battle - command it, or fight in it? If I were to describe Waterloo from Napoleon's point of view, it would be very different from that same battle from the point of view of a soldier, or even a cavalry lieutenant in the front ranks. Napoleon's fate is decided on that battlefield as much as the lieutenant's. Napoleon has a better unders... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Future battlegrounds What makes a battle scene tense and visceral is the immediate danger and the fast-paced action and reaction. For that, the human soldier needs to be on the battlefield, in the action. Here's the problem though: as technology advances, we move soldiers away from the battlefield, if we can. As an exam... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Does success imply validation and agreement? In 1984, Big Brother succeeds. Big Brother is a very successful bully. In the end, one even learns to love Big Brother. There is no validation and agreement in 1984. There is a terrible warning. This too is a path you can choose to take with your story. How would you do that? By keeping sympathy f... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How much character growth crosses the line into breaking the character Here's something important: if I am invested in a character, I would feel cheated if that character suddenly changes off-screen, and I am supposed to just accept that change as their new "characteristic". It's not enough that one could theoretically get there from here, as @Jedediah states. I would w... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Using substitution ciphers to generate new alphabets in a novel If you wish to depict encrypted text, use an actual encryption. Something that could be decrypted by hand, but would require some effort. That would be a fun for a puzzle-minded reader to figure out, an easter-egg if you wish. For the reader who is not a puzzle lover, you should (eventually) provide ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Characterizing a sentient robot: sensory data As @Amadeus points out, a robot programmed to interact with humans would know what range of colours "yellow" corresponds to, and would use "yellow" when interacting with humans. Interacting with other robots, a robot might find it more comfortable to use the specific wavelength, or some similar repre... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Turning away from the 3-act structure - what guides my pacing now? Not all stories follow a 3-act structure. As an example, Les Misérables is rather episodic in its nature: first there's the story of Bishop Myriel and how he meets Jean Valjean, then there's Fantine's story, then Cosette's, then we have Marius who encounters now-adult Cosette, then there are multiple... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |