Activity for Galastel
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Are "non-readers" useful beta readers? Assuming that by "non-readers" you mean "people who are not fans of the genre you write", they can be useful beta-readers. Here are some points for you to consider, in no particular order. - Being used to certain genre conventions, you might no longer notice when those conventions have some inheren... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to go from an opening idea to a complete plot? A start, a setup, is not a story. Consider, for example, how many different adventure stories start with "enemies" attacking the protagonist's home town, forcing him to leave home. From the Wheel of Time series, to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There are infinite possibilities of where you ca... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Do readers not like a book if it's too dark and the characters almost never win? Hmm. When I'm not sure about something, I like to look at some examples. All Quiet on the Western Front has the characters never win. In fact, they all die, and their side loses the war (something we know from the outset, since that's Germany in WWI we're talking about). Nonetheless, All Quiet on th... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is it more important to provide representation, or to avoid following stereotypes? A while ago, I asked a similar question about representation of national groups. I invite you to take a look at it here. The answers I got boiled down to this: you cannot possibly have every human group represented. Your cast is diverse, that's great. That's enough. Make sure your characters are well... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Arousing Emotion in Readers Forget the petty everyday annoyances like being stuck in traffic. What awakens your righteous anger? What makes your blood boil? Here are some examples. Injustice If I read about a child being bullied or abused, I am going to be angry: angry at the bully, angry at the adults who are allowing this t... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How does one go about describing someone doing Naruto like hand symbols? I don't know what "Naruto-like hand symbols" are, but from the context of the question, I am going to assume they are some kind of complex hand gestures used to cast spells (or something similar). So let us proceed from there. Firs thing you need to ask yourself is: do you need to describe each part... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Writing a Novel Set In The Future The trope you're referring to, if I understand what you're saying, is "20 minutes into the future" (TV Tropes link here and onwards). Works based on this trope would usually focus on societal, rather than technological changes, exploring the progression of modern trends. Famous examples of such works... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Disposable Characters In a way, all characters are disposable; you are their god, you are free to kill characters or keep them alive, as suits your Grand Plan. The question is rather what suits your grand plan - what kind of story you're trying to tell. For example, I am currently writing a war novel. In a war novel, you... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Mixing humour with horror in fiction Horror works on building tension. Humour breaks it. On the face of it, you've got two cardinally opposed directions here. How do you mix the two? First, there's gallows humour. Gallows humour doesn't undermine the dark tone of the situation. If anything - it drives it home. At the same time, there'... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Where do I start? As everybody else says, all options are viable. You can start from a scene that's bright in your mind and write to it and from it, you can throw scenes on paper and then connect them, you can start from the end and then write towards it. For every writer, a different approach works. So, listen to adv... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Do I have to capitalize ESP in sci fi fiction sentences? ESP stands for "Extrasensory Perception". It is an abbreviation. The correct way to write it is therefore in All Caps: ESP, similar to how one writes NASA, USA and DNA. A potential publisher wouldn't trash your novel for a capitalisation error, but it is quite possible they wouldn't understand what ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Do writers write philosophical essays? I am going to start by disagreeing with @Amadeus. The first job of a writer is not to entertain. At least, not necessarily. I don't think anyone reads All Quiet on the Western Front, or The Old Man and the Sea, or Crime and Punishment and goes "Ooh, that was entertaining". The works we call "literary... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How do you write a story about a team? There are many possibilities of teams, in terms of number and group dynamics. You might want to look at TV Tropes: Power Trio, Four-Man Band and Five-Man Band for some fairly standard builds. Note, however, that the structures presented are sort of averages that the examples more or less fit - they a... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Positive Transformation in the Arc of a Story It depends. How much do you have to tell about the MC after he undergoes this transformation? Is this the main conflict of your story, or merely something that impedes the MC from dealing with the main conflict? Basically, smooth sailing is boring. If there's more conflict for your character after t... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What are the Pros and Cons of long names? Let me start with a disclaimer: some languages are naturally more tolerant of long names (and long words) than others. In Finnish, you've got names like Väinämöinen. In Hebrew, if something has more than two syllables, you can be sure it's a loanword. So your definition of "long" would have to be lan... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Thoroughly Despicable Characters Evil-happenings-in-childhood and similar "extenuating circumstances" are a trope referred to as a Freudian Excuse (TV Tropes link). The main problem with this trope is what it implies: because character suffered whatever. it is now OK for them to do Bad Thing. Ergo, it is OK for anyone who suffered w... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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Need a bit of verse in my prose I am an (aspiring) fiction writer. I write prose. However, every so often, I run into a need for poetry. I might need a prophecy, or a ritual blessing, or a character might be serenading another, or some piece of information should be hidden in an old song: I need verse. The plot demands it. Trouble... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Characters that take on a life of their own Taking a life of their own is exactly what your characters should be doing. They should have enough of a "character" that a reader can predict how they would act in a given situation. That's what makes the characters "come alive" for the reader. Consequently, a reader can easily spot when a charact... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to refer to characters in a non-repetitive way in the third person? In Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling alternates between "Aunt Petunia" "his aunt" and "she". In Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury has the following: > Far off, the old man smiled. > They approached each other, carefully. > 'Is that you, Will? Grown an inch since this morning.' Charles Hall... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Sizing of a chapter and how many should I use? A chapter can be long or short, it can be longer or shorter than other chapters in your novel, you might have a novel with no chapters at all. Think of it this way: a sentence isn't defined as 5-10 words. It is as long as it needs to be to express a small idea. Not letting it run over three lines is... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: The psychology of starting a piece of writing How do you start writing? You sit down and write. No matter how trite, no matter how derivative - you write. You give it your honest best effort. Then, the next day, you give what you've written an honest look. You note what's good, what's bad. Then, you either continue writing, edit yesterday's work... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to make the villain relatable/human without making the hero seem like a monster for killing him? I'd say the way to make the villain sympathetic is to make him human. Someone who errs, someone who regrets things he's done, someone who isn't always up to his own standards. Look for example at King Claudius's monologue in Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2: > O, my offence is rank! It smells to heaven. > I... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to differentiate narration and thoughts in the first person POV? You don't necessarily need to distinguish the two. If you write, for example, > Dan stared out of the window of the classroom. A green park spread outside. Tulips and Hyacinths were in full bloom. Inside, the teacher droned on about something. You are both narrating the setting (classroom, spring),... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Scene switching and how to do it? What you are describing reminds me of The Lord of the Rings, once the Fellowship splits up. Different chapters follow Frodo, Aragorn, Merry and Pippin. To avoid confusion, Tolkien always devotes whole chapters, not parts of them, to each character. That is, a jump between characters never occurs in ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: What to avoid when foreshadowing a death? I can think of several instances of bad foreshadowing , where I have moved from thinking the character might die, to knowing beyond any doubt that he will die. Let's examine them first: In Farscape (TV series), a "good" character crossed a moral event horizon - he did something so completely terribl... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How can I write in a way that makes the book very interesting to read? Vocabulary alone isn't enough to make your book interesting. In fact, if your story is too heavy with obscure words, it might become hard to read and off-putting. That said, growing your vocabulary is a good idea for a writer: your vocabulary is your arsenal of tools that you can use as you see fit.... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to refer to a character who doesn't know her name? One solution, at least at first, is to just use the pronoun : > She woke up in a room she did not recognise. How had she got here? Where was she? Come to think of it, who was she? With a horrible sinking feeling, she realised she couldn't remember her name. Such a structure emphasises the disorient... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: When does something become "torture porn"? Let me point you to the relevant TV Tropes page: Torture Porn In brief, torture porn is when a work gives a lot of attention to the torture, describes it in great detail, apparently not so much to show that torture is wrong, but to simultaneously disgust the audience and give them a visceral thrill.... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How do I write alternate history? Here's an important thing to remember: at the heart of your novel are the characters. Nobody is going to read something that looks and feels like a history schoolbook, only it's "alternative" history. So the first things you have to figure out are who your characters are , and what's their story. The... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Alternative sources of drama/tension when the setting is low-violence There are other stakes than death. From all of Jane Austen to some of Asimov, sometimes the world isn't about to end, and nobody is about to die. So what else is there? First, your story can be small : will the guy get the girl? That's Jane Austen. Will things work out financially for the MC? Hector... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to add depth to writing - turn a story into a book There are several potential issues that could affect the length of your story. How you tell it Let me start with an example, from Jim Butcher's Storm Front (the first of the Dresden Files novels). What could have been > Harry made a love potion with Bob's help is instead > I grumbled, and set t... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: In a "Gatsby" type story, how does a narrator relate what he doesn't get to see? In Jane Austen's novels, for example, it happens more than once that characters learn about an event second-hand: > Darling, I've just heard that... Or > It is only the desire to be useful that compels me to tell you that... This allows you to introduce events that your narrator couldn't have wit... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How much can I trust my players to remember previous states of the story and not get confused? My gaming experience is with Bioware games. In those games, choices you make significantly affect the way the game ends. Consequently, it is quite common to play multiple playthroughs to achieve the end you want, or to return to an earlier savepoint and tweak choices - that is, doing manually what yo... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: The psychology of finishing a piece of fiction Yup, I'm quite familiar with that feeling, in both my creative writing and my academic writing. (Albeit, it doesn't depress me - it makes me facepalm, grunt my teeth, and start revising. But the frustration and disappointment are definitely there.) What happens is, I have this shining image in my min... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to write a Complete Monster? Look at RL complete monsters. They exist. What makes them complete monsters? What makes them who they are? Hitler wanted to see his country return to its glory days. That goal is not deviant in itself. His racism wasn't uncommon at the time either, or he wouldn't have had such a following. He crosse... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to write about characters and places you aren't personally familiar with? You mean, what if you're a resident of country A, writing about a citizen of country B travelling in country C? Go ahead, enjoy yourself. Jules Verne, for example, had never visited the places he wrote about: Africa, Australia, the Pacific etc. The MCs of his Les Enfants du capitaine Grant are Scott... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Can I include Acknowledgement page in a novel? An acknowledgement page in novels usually appears in the end , rather than the beginning as you would see in scientific writings. There's one in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, there's one in Naomi Novik's Uprooted, there's one in Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and th... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to open a novel? The way you open a novel largely depends on what kind of novel you're writing. If you're writing a humorous novel, there should be something humorous right on the first page. Look, for example, at Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens: > It was a nice day. > All the days had been nice. Ther... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it okay to write a story where the protagonist is a Terrorist? Can you? Yes. As @Cloudchaser points out, it is being done, increasingly more commonly. Do I wish such stories did not exist? YES. Terrorist attacks are very much a part of my life. There's a failed attempt every week where I live, on average once a month they do not fail. When I was a child, it wa... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to avoid writing irritating fan fictions? No matter how good your fanfiction is, no matter how good your fiction is, no matter how good anything you do is, there will be trolls using vile language to put you down. There's not much you can do about them except ignore them. That said, the question of what things to avoid like the plague when ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Would a character displaying the opposite of one of their characteristics break immersion? Even a generally rational character might have issues that cause them to snap and act irrationally. For example, in Star Trek TOS, in the episode with the Horta, Spock (the epitome of rationality) is all rational and "Captain, we must preserve life, we must attempt to figure out what the creature's ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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Referencing modern pop culture in science fiction A geek today is quite likely to reference the pop culture of 30 years ago: "Do or do not, there is no try", "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Ground control to Major Tom" are easily and commonly recognisable. (The first is Star Wars, the second is associated with Star Trek though it never appears verbatim, t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do you verify information? Little Details is a livejournal fact-checking community for writers. They are not currently as active as I'd like, but you can find there huge amounts of tiny details for writers, sorted by topic. I have found them to be very useful. When they are active, they are happy to answer exactly the sort of ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to depict writing from a different time period? A character in 1348 would be speaking Middle English, not modern English at all. Middle English is so different from modern English, that it is a distinct language (source). The same, I suppose, would be true of other European languages as well. So, whatever your 1348 writing would have been, you wou... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Do I need to repeat character descriptions of main characters from one book to the next? Whether or not your sequel can be read as a standalone novel, in the years that pass between the publication of one book and the next, it is quite likely that your readers would have forgotten some things. You should offer them a reminder. That said, if you repeat everything, it might be boring for ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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Foregone conclusion of novel's first part I'm writing a war sci-fi novel. At the start of the novel, my MC really wants to get into a particular unit, let's call it Space-Marines. His struggle through the training serves to showcase his high motivation, the fact that the soldiers are prepared as well as they can possibly be before being sent... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Should foreshadowing be close to the main event? I don't think it is universally true that foreshadowing should be close to the event. For example, Frodo's inability to cast the Ring into the Cracks of Doom is foreshadowed by his inability to cast it into the fireplace in Bag End, right in the beginning of the Lord of the Rings. Or, another example... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do you keep a villainous character from being offensive to a particular group? In addition to real war veterans whom you don't want to hurt, there's one more side to WWII. Intellectually, I know that there were good people and less good people among American troops at the time. Emotionally, Allied Troops are the reason any of my family survived. I owe a debt of gratitude to eve... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do I make "foreshadowing" more relevant in the early going? Bootcamp is a harrowing experience. (Been there, done that.) You can make it interesting simply by having your character struggle through it, mentally and physically. It's usually more interesting to read about some sort of struggle, than about smooth going. Then, any foreshadowing you need to do, y... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Likeable characters with deplorable professions? You can't judge a period character based on modern values. In a setting (real or imaginary) when slaves are owned, and society does not challenge it, it would be anachronistic for your character to refuse to own slaves. Such modern values stick out like a sore thumb. As long as your character is not... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |