Activity for Galastel
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How can show that my cold hearted character is coping with grief? What you've got to answer for yourself, very clearly, is what emotions your android experiences, and to what extent. You mention your android has an attachment to another android. Can they form other attachments, at all? You mention the android has a goal. What guides him - why this particular goal?... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can you frame ritual suicide in a "positive" light? Don't think of what you're describing as "ritual suicide" - that has negative connotations. At least, it does for you, since you're not confident about the topic. Instead, think of what you're describing as giving up one's life for a cause. I mean, that's what they're doing, right? A character gives ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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Is head-hopping always bad? The general consensus nowadays seems to be that being in the head of more than one character is bad. We should be "on the shoulders" or "in the head" of one character, and one character only, if not throughout the novel, then at least throughout a "part" (chapter etc.). Often the POV change (note we... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What team do I need to start creating comics? Many online comics are made entirely by one person. Take a look, for example, at Order of the Stick. Other comics have a writer, an artist to do the inking, another artist for the colours, and yet another artist for the lettering. All options in between are also viable, and are done by various webcom... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Will my one sentence prologue work? It is not uncommon for fictional works to start with quotes from real or fictional personages. Dune, in particular, makes heavy use of this tool, starting every chapter with excerpts from fictional history books, written by one of the main characters, and providing commentary, and "additional sources... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Rules for use of quotation marks when paraphrasing quotes, song lyrics etc., for a humorus effect in a cartoon caption. Some references to popular songs would count as "fair use". For example, Sir Terry Pratchett, in his novel Soul Music (which is all about Rock) makes references to multiple Rock songs. For example, there's a song called "Sioni Bod Da", which translates from Welsh as "Johnny be good", and references... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do you escalate a story's plot after killing the Big Bad? There are many ways you can go with a series after the Big Bad is defeated. - Was that in fact the Big Bad? Or were they in fact a servant of an Even Bigger Bad? Perhaps they were, in some way, a victim of the Even Bigger Bad, manipulated some way into doing what they did? - What are the consequence... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should a non-native writer try to use complex English words? The answer to your question depends on whether you're writing fiction, or non-fiction. Non-fiction If you're writing non-fiction, particularly if you're writing an academic text, being understood is the first goal you should strive for. You're presenting complex ideas. Don't make those ideas even h... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Promoting controversial opinions in a work of fiction Are you familiar with G.R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire? It used to have some characters whose moral compass was strict and noble. They had a tendency to die, and leave a huge mess around them - mess that cost more lives. On the other hand, more Machiavellian figures created order - killing a few ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What kind of protagonist or writing style is Jack Sparrow? Sir Terry Pratchett had several characters who, like Jack Sparrow, were used sparingly in the stories of others, but had a strong presence both in terms of their impact on the story, and in terms of the way the audience saw them. Pratchett wrote: > Like Death and the Librarian, I tend to use Vetinar... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can the prologue's POV be different from the POV of main story? As others have mentioned, writing a prologue from a different POV than the rest of the story is common enough. The part I'm not sure about is writing the prologue in first person, while the rest of the novel is in third person. First person feels "closer to the character" than third person. So you'd... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Interviewing a person for a character In terms of building a character, what should guide you is what the story requires. If you need a mad scientist to make Frankenstein's monster, but the person you meet is nice and well-spoken, do you then change your whole story? It is not a bad idea to notice things about people, and incorporate t... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How to use professional jargon when writing fiction? The military, the medical professions, police, etc. - they have their professional jargon. One noteworthy characteristic of this jargon is the extensive use of abbreviations. Those abbreviations are associated with "being a professional" to such an extent that tv shows often use them as shorthand for... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should I avoid sex scenes / nudity in my horror game (or in general)? Videogames with sexual content do exist. Bioware's Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises offer "vanilla" sex, same-sex sex, BDSM sex, interspecies sex. All of it loving, consenting, and heart-warming. All of it story-relevant. None of it actually shows any "naughty bits" - it's mostly smart camera an... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Repetition of information in my multi-path / multi-play-through game - how to deal with it? Are you familiar with Bioware's games (Dragon Age, Mass Effect)? Because of the many different plot choices the game offers, a player might well find themselves returning to an earlier save-point and repeating a scene for the sake of picking a different dialogue option. I'm not sure this is what you ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Why are Americans obsessed with acronyms, abreviations and initials? There are several reasons why acronyms, abbreviations and initials would be used. Some of those reasons have to do with the reality of the relevant professions, others might be as much for the audience's benefit as they are about what would be realistic. - Anyone can say "gunshot wound". When we hea... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to sort out a confusing storyline? Writing a complex story with multiple storylines, I find it useful to chart things. I draw a timeline: what happens when, what age characters are at the time, which event occur simultaneously, how long it should take to travel from point A to point B. On a timeline, it's easy to see whether I've made... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write dialogueless flashbacks? Think of your flashbacks like you think of any other scene. The fact that this is a flashback shouldn't make a significant difference. There are five senses you can engage: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and there are your character's emotions regarding what's going on. Since you are writing a... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How far apart can the dots be? When you're writing a story, you know all the clues and all the connections. Since you know them already, they might well seem obvious to you. Are they as obvious to the reader? A good way to find out is to offer the story to beta readers, and hear what they say. If most beta readers get it, but one... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do I design characters for an open-ended series? There are two cardinally different ways you can treat your characters in a series. In some series, the characters remain the same, facing the "challenge of the week". They do not undergo any significant change themselves. A famous example of such structure is Star Trek, the Original Series. Kirk, Sp... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Which should come first, building my story or building my world? For me (and for the people who answered before me, I see,) story and worldbuilding go together, with the story in the driver's seat. Let me give you an example: Suppose I'm writing a military sci-fi story. First there's the general shape of it - where's the fighting, who's doing the fighting, what ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to interpret a language from a non-speaker's perspective? The meaning of words can be inferred from context. For example, in his book Elantris, Brandon Sanderson has a character insert words from his (fictional) mother-tongue into conversation. > Raoden breathed a sigh of relief. "Whoever you are, I'm glad to see you. I was beginning to think everyone in h... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: YA Literature - Violence I've read the Three Musketeers when I was 10. Here are some reasons I did not find the violence troubling, and how you can apply them to your writing. (And just to clarify, I wasn't a child who didn't mind violence. In fact, by age 14 I still couldn't watch big parts of X-men, for example, because th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to indicate that the source language is gender-neutral? The only way I see to maintain the effect you're talking about is not to use pronouns. You can use the character's name. You can use their profession / rank / etc. You can say "we did", "they did" (talking about multiple people) since the plural hides gender. If you're describing a group situation, i... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Proper handling of "sophisticated" English usage @MatthewDave is quite right in saying that a sophisticated person's language would be distinguished by lack of 'lower-class' colloquialisms. Add to that impeccable grammar, and a rich vocabulary. By rich vocabulary I do not mean random use of fancy words. Instead, I mean words with a narrower meanin... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to convert a roleplay into a book? The core novels of the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman started out as this - a D&D campaign. You might find it useful to take a look at their work. In some scenes of Dragons of Autumn Twilight (the first novel) in particular, you can see the heavy D&D influence; for example, the... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How to research sex for writing? I'm not writing erotica - I'm writing fantasy and sci-fi. But sometimes my characters make love, sometimes in ways I cannot be familiar with. In one story, it's two guys (I'm a girl). In another story, there's a character who uses a wheelchair. How do I research this, so I can get the relevant scene... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can I state a fact in a first person story? The subject of your sentence can be something other than the MC when you're writing in first person. For example: > My phone rang or > Footsteps were coming down the alley behind me You don't need to always narrate in the active: "I saw", "I heard", "I conquered". You don't even need to specify y... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Exposition: Talking Animals - How do I Reveal This to the Reader? To answer your question, first you would need to answer for yourself the following: - The anthropo-weasels - do they view themselves as the same kind of creature as, say, anthropo-lions? Can anthropo-weasels procreate with antropo-lions? Can / would anthropo-lions eat anthropo-zebras? - How do the a... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Establishing a social circle for a promiscuous character The answer to your questions depends entirely on how you characterise the girl's friends. Are they prudish snobs? Then yes, they would shun her. Otherwise, no reason why they should. If they disagree with how she acts, they might say something, but there's a great difference from this to actually pus... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Describing a strong sexual attraction (on first sight) You are telling that the human is attracted to the alien. Why not show instead? A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, so why not create that picture? Consider what attraction feels like - is there a physiological reaction? Are there thoughts the character is suddenly thinking, that have not... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to describe a mythological creature that English has no vocabulary for? The differences between 'fairy', 'elf' 'goblin' and 'demon' are not negligible. The fact that a dictionary offers you all of them, or that all have been used in different setting in the past, does not imply that all those words mean the same thing, but that in different situations or contexts, they c... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do I finish my stories although I have both ideas and titles for them? An idea is an image. Consider, for example: > The fraternity of critics, in reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perform a critical mass… This one is from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, one of many ideas that flow out of a characte... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Sensitivity with disorders/mental illnesses If you succeed in eliciting strong emotions in your readers, you've done good. If you make your readers cry, bite their nails to the quick, put the book down in fear only to pick it up five minutes later - that's a success. Don't be afraid of strong emotions. Neil Gaiman, in the introduction to his s... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: I kinda want to completely annihilate the hero - what would speak against it? If I understand you correctly, on the one hand you want your hero to willingly go through with a selfless sacrifice, wiping himself out of time so he never existed in the first place (or something similar). You feel the plot demands a sacrifice greater than just death. On the other hand, you feel th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can dream reveals make good climaxes for a POV’s internal struggle? The trope you're referring to is called All Just a Dream (tv tropes warning). While some authors can pull it off, it is usually considered a bad trope to use. The reason for this is that the "it's all just a dream" reveal is anticlimactic : there's something very dramatic happening, but then it has n... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How do I create a custom dictionary in OpenOffice? Writing fantasy and sci-fi, I grow a sizeable specialised vocabulary per story (names, locations, fantastical things, etc.) I grow tired of the autocorrect grumbling at this vocabulary, and would much rather have it poke me when I misspell those words. At the same time, I do not want to pollute the ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Does point of view matter drastically? If you look at older literature, Victor Hugo for example, stories do not necessarily start with the main character, and switch between multiple POVs. So in and of itself, there is nothing wrong with using multiple POVs and switching between them. At the same time, you need to be clear on whose thoug... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to stop rushing writing It is not terrible practice to write some parts sloppily, if you later come back and edit them. I am familiar with the desire to get to certain scenes, and yet I need at least the general shape of the scenes before, in order to get the "interesting" scene to play out right. So sometimes I rush throu... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Invoking Deliberate Values Dissonance The values of the Middle Ages existed for more reasons than church dogma. For example, sleeping with a girl before marrying her meant a fair chance of her getting pregnant. Which was also why men wanted their bride to be a virgin - when resources are scarce, nobody wants to raise another man's child.... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What sorts of characters does a superhero team need? A superhero team is first of all a team. You might therefore find the question How to write a story about a team? useful. With that in hand, you must also determine whether your team are all superheroes, or there's just the one superhero and the rest are regular people. If your team is a team of su... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do I indicate that my character is speaking a different language than the one used for narration? Since you're telling the story in first person, you can say outright that the conversation is not in the language of the narration. Something like: > I understood StrangeLandian, but I spoke it badly. I should have learnt it better before I decided to travel. To make it not boring, blend the mentio... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: "Stealing" jokes If a joke is a century old and you've heard it told a hundred times, you can reuse it. You can modify it, you can build on it - by this point it's not "owned" by anyone. Trouble is, by this point your readers have also heard this joke a hundred times. Sometimes it can work - in a sci-fi setting, an o... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What makes "thrilling" writing? The defining characteristic of the thriller genre is suspense. That is, the audience expects something bad to happen. Suspense can be created if the audience knows more than the main character. For example, when Little Red Riding Hood starts talking to the wolf, we expect her to be eaten, while she ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Respecting classic dramatic structure in a documentary If I understand you correctly, the subject of your documentary is standing on the brink of a major change: there's his life up to "now" (what you call "act 1"), and then there's the way things will unfold from now on. The thing is, you do not yet know how things will unfold - you're documenting even... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do you make two characters fall in love? How do people in Real Life fall in love? They get to know each other. They share some interests, so they enjoy spending time together, and have common things to talk about. They respect each other. Each has qualities the other finds positive, perhaps even admirable. They are willing to forgive each o... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How to improve a scene where the drama is one-sided and not with the POV character? I have a scene I struggle with: it has potential for inherent drama, but it reads as an info dump. In a high-fantasy setting (more or less), character Alpha, a 14-year old daughter of a nobleman comes out as a lesbian to character Brava, a fertility priestess. The scene occurs relatively early in th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Translating worldbuilding into an interesting opening A related question: How to open a novel? It sounds like your prologue opens in medias res - in the middle of the action. You already have orcs marching, preparing to fight. Since, in terms of plot, that's the starting point you've chosen for your story, it makes sense that the atmosphere of the scen... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Are characters' internal thoughts written in past or present tense? Either can be used, as @DPT says. > I heard a loud screech from beyond the gates, then silence. 'What is going on?' I thought. Here, effectively, you are presenting the thought as internal monologue. The character is effectively talking to himself. You therefore treat it as if you were writing dial... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What should I do if I can't properly formulate the personality of one of my characters in my novel? Since you are writing a group, consider what character traits are missing in the group without the character you're struggling to write. Does your group have a comic-relief? A moral compass? A quiet steady person? Etc. Remember also that opposing traits make each character stand out: like Spock and ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |