Activity for Galastel
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Do writers copy other writers? Stealing is bad. Quite aside from it being illegal, what satisfaction would you draw from presenting someone else's work? It's not yours, the praise it gets is not to you. Being inspired by another author, on the other hand, is good. A work of art should inspire. And there's nothing wrong with delib... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Why would a translator leave comments all over the translation? If I understand correctly, the comments are in the original text. That's what the translator's note says: > the interlinear comments (IC) and marginal comments (MC) in the original text If something is in the original text, the translator has to translate it. What the translator did is adapt the fo... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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How to plan a short story for a given word count? Many short story competitions, at least in Israel, set a theme and a word count: up to 2500 words, 2000-5000 words, etc. I often find myself starting short stories for such competitions, and hitting the word count upper limit halfway into the story I want to tell. The only times I managed to stay wit... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Trying to figure out the correct type punctuation for dialogues For regular dialogue, you don't need italics. Quotation marks are what marks dialogue. Italics are usually reserved for non-verbal communication. That could be the voice in your character's head and your character's replies to it, or that too could be in quotation marks - depending on how you want t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Describing something that doesn't exist The thing with an imaginary object is this: people aren't going to see the exact same thing as you see in your mind, no matter how many words you pour on it. Each reader is going to imagine what you describe in a slightly different way. For example, Tolkien describes hobbits in quite some detail. Ye... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Do I have to show my characters making up after an argument, or can it be implied when we see them on good terms again? If the argument is a minor one, and the characters are people you'd expect to generally get along (good friends, parent/child etc.), you can safely skip the making up. In long-term relationships of any sort, it is natural that minor arguments occur, and then get resolved. It's not a big issue, it mig... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Tools for organising anthologies This would be a technically advanced solution, but if you are comfortable coding, you might want to use a database management system (DBMS). One you probably already have is Micorsoft Access (comes with the Office suite) or OpenOffice Base (comes with OpenOffice, available on both Windows and Linux).... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Slow buildup vs sudden introduction The " Build up to it" route is the conventional way to tell the story. The progression is more or less linear. The protagonist's struggle to unlock the power is bound together with his struggle against the villain. The " Introduce suddenly, explain later" route offers you several interesting, not mu... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What happens when you translate a quotation? In what context? In a context of, for example, a newspaper, the quote is translated, and remains a quote. For example, today Israeli newspapers were all translating the statement of the Kensington Palace regarding Kate Middleton giving birth to a third child. It remained a quote, even though at leas... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What is the most fundamental advice when it comes to writing? I don't know about "looking back" and "career", I'm still rather looking forward to that... :) That said, one piece of advice that really struck me, stuck with me and stayed with me is Neil Gaiman's " Make good art": Write what you love writing, enjoy the process, do it for the art - not for the mo... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to write two seemingly different characters that are actually the same person? Do you mean a Jekyll/Hyde plot? Such a plot twist needs some amount of foreshadowing, so that the savvy reader might suspect, while the less savvy reader would have a moment of "Aha! now it all makes sense!" Such foreshadowing can come in the form of information that Jekyll receives and Hyde respon... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to relate stormy weather to sadness? It's in the language: words like "grey", "dreary" evoke sadness. The sky might be weeping (though that's a little over the top and overused). A lonely seagull might be crying plaintively. Wind might be bighting. Adjectives and adverbs associated with sadness would relate the stormy weather to the emo... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do I write a deep conversation scene? How do you write a conversation? You write the dialogue: what guy A said, what guy B said. Consider how they say it, how they talk at all: are they open with each other, or are there things they are not comfortable sharing? Is there a non-verbal communication between them, do they understand each oth... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Help with my story - elements of a scene One thing you want to consider is how you want the scene to read: - Do you want the scene to have sexual overtones? - Do you want the girl to appear weak, a passive sheep, (making the reader identify, at least partially, with the hunter-vampire), or do you want her an active heroine fighting off a m... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: No time to deal with emotional trauma If your story takes place over the course of a month, your character is still going to be very much dealing with trauma by the end of it. Take the RL case of the Itamar Massacre: 12-years-old Tamar Fogel came home from a youth outing to find her parents murdered, her baby sister's severed head in th... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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How to manage getting depressed by what my main character goes through? I'm writing a war (sci-fi) novel. The MC dies in the end. It's not as thoroughly depressing as "All Quiet on the Western Front", but Remarque's work is definitely one source of inspiration. Now, partway through writing, I find that writing is too painful for me to continue. It's not that I'm writing... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: A novel in which the only dialogue is internal? "The Old Man and the Sea" comes to mind as a novel where I don't recall any dialogue. Santiago talks to himself, talks to his hand, talks to the fish, etc., but that isn't really dialogue. Or, of you wish, it's internal dialogue. How does it work? You've got one character, against the elements. Nobo... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: "Calm" vs Adventurous Main Protagonist Since everyone is set on a proactive character, let me present the reactive choice as at least viable. The hobbits in The Lord of the Rings are anything but proactive. They would like nothing better than to sit in their holes and smoke pipeweed. Frodo has no desire whatsoever to be the one taking th... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is blending a largely illustrated book like James Gurney's "Dinotopia" and a dramatic and more serious plot a bad idea? There are heavily illustrated books with weighty serious content. Terry Pratchett's Last Hero and Neil Gaiman's Stardust are two examples I have standing on my shelf. Both are very much not children's books. You want to go even more serious, there are the famous illustrations by Gustave Doré to Dan... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How explicit can violence and sex be in a YA novel? Let me give you an answer from a different perspective: not what Young Adults are reading, not what appears in modern YA fiction, but what I was reading as a teenager (12-16), and how it made me feel. I was not reading YA fiction at all. I felt it was too simplistic, written down to some audience, n... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it okay to switch protagonists between books, if the main protagonist is a hidden "actor"? I wouldn't say that the premise that you shouldn't switch protagonists between novels is an absolute truth in the first place. What's so frustrating about reading about new characters? Doesn't one do that every time one picks a new book? Isn't that what one picks a new book for? So two books happen ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it acceptable to break the story up into POVs to show how the characters' stories all tie together? What you are describing is quite acceptable. G.R.R. Martin uses this method in "Song of Ice and Fire", with many many more characters: each chapter follows a different POV character, with 7+ POV characters per book. Another example would be Diana Wynne Jones's "The Merlin Conspiracy", alternating bet... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What are some clear differences in theme/story between children's, middle grade, and young adult fantasy? There are no clear-cut distinctions. Children are different. One child might be reading at 6 what another wouldn't touch until 12. For example, King Matt the First is explicitly written for children (under 8). It deals with themes like death, war, responsibility, and it doesn't have a happy ending. I... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do you assess the value of an individual scene? You can indeed distil a story only to the scenes essential to plot progression. This is the trend of modern-day literature, perhaps influenced by the way movies are made. However, one of the differences between a movie and a book is that you are not expected to experience a whole book, start to finis... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Should I write scared? Neil Gaiman said "Make good art." In the same speech he says: > The moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself - that's the moment you may be starting to get i... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Creative license to invent a sibling to a historical figure? Can you? Yes. There is nothing wrong with it, either legally or ethically. What you're doing would come under "artistic license". In fact, Alexandre Dumas' "The Man in the Iron Mask", for instance, relies on similar artistic license: as far as we know, Louis XIV had no twin brother. So you'd be in go... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Dialog problems with a character with only one name? My first thought is, if you're struggling with this issue, why not make your character struggle with it too? If she has no family name, then in situations where she needs to be addressed by one, she'd feel uncomfortable. Exactly because this conveys social status, she would have some emotions towards... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to get valuable feedback on the quality of my storytelling? What you're looking for is beta readers. Beta readers would read all your work, and look at exactly the things you are unsure about: general flow, plot holes, etc. Who can be beta readers? Friends, if they are the kind of people who could point a finger at something and say "this doesn't work at all... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it better to avoid names with a difficult pronunciation in Middle Grade fiction? Short answer: definitely, absolutely, wholeheartedly 3. Long answer: Sir Terry Pratchett wrote somewhere that since he was reading a lot as a child, when he was little there were many words he knew only in writing, but had never heard spoken. For example, it was years before he learnt that "ogres" w... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it okay if I wrote a story based on true historical events? What you describe, if I understand it correctly, is historical fiction. That's a genre with a long and proud tradition. It includes works as diverse as Ivanhoe, War and Peace, The Three Musketeers, and All Quiet on the Western Front. It can be close to historical events, which, as Mark Baker points o... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to best pace information reveals to the reader Pushing off from Alexander's answer, when something "strange" happens in a book I am reading, and I notice it, (sometimes a bit of strangeness can be a subtle hint that I'd only see upon rereading), I either trust the author that this is a hook, to be explained later, or I am frustrated by random odd... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Where can I find resources for bedtime story plots? I gave your question some thought, and I figure the best source of inspiration for you would be an encyclopaedia. Let me explain: your regular characters can travel to distant lands where they'd encounter new views, customs, wildlife etc. They can travel back in time to various interesting historical... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to prevent turning off the reader at first with a protagonist with unlikeable traits but that becomes better later on? Your character is a warrior. That lends itself to many positive qualities you can show: loyalty, courage, professionalism, camaraderie. There's a reason we have so many stories about warriors: these qualities evoke respect. Show your MC as a complex character, with admirable qualities, and qualities ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Linguistic simplicity in novels: how do different world markets/languages view it? It would be hard for me to answer about popular books, but I can answer about literature I enjoy. In Hebrew and Russian (my mother tongues), as well as in English, I gravitate towards either the classics, or fantasy/sci-fi - towards literature that challenges me, and demands thought. I expect the lan... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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What pronoun should a hermaphrodite species use? In my fantasy novel, I have a species that is fully hermaphroditic: all individuals have both male and female reproductive organs. Like garden snails. Consequently, they have only one gender. They explicitly state that they don't mind when confused humans refer to them as he/she/it/they. Humans cons... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What reason would there be for the heros to not let the benevolent superhuman entitiy handle the Big Problems? I can see several differently flavoured options. 1. The Entity is worshipped as a God, or similar. You do not risk your God's existence for your own goals. You give up your life for your God. This is an approach you see in Zelazny's "Amber Chronicles" (described from the "Gods'", a.k.a the Princes o... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: When naming a character, is thematic naming or realistic naming more important? There are many factors that would affect what names would work better for your characters. First, is the character using a name, nickname or pseudonym? A nickname would be given for some reason, a pseudonym would be chosen with some thought in mind. It therefore makes sense for nicknames and pseudon... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: "Real people don't make good fictional characters". Really true? Here's a way to look at it: suppose a Cerberus the size of a horse shows up in the middle of a crowded shopping centre and starts grabbing people. Most "real" people would either run away screaming, or freeze in horrified shock. These people don't make a good story - they are boring. They are reactiv... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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Pretty flowers with clunky Latin names I am writing a fantasy novel set in the Middle East. For multiple reasons related to both plot and atmosphere, I'm using flowers and flowering trees a lot in both descriptions and dialogue. Trouble is, many plants that are very common in the Middle East don't have common names in English - only clunk... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How Much Focus to Give a Supporting Character? The situation you're describing reminds me very much of Bishop Myriel in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables: had he not granted Jean Valjean hospitality, had he not drawn him to a new path, we would never have had the reformed Valjean. Thus, Myriel's influence on the story is crucial and transformative. Ho... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Where's the middle ground between genre conventions and originality? Originality isn't contained merely in what populates your fantasy world. In fact, I'd say that's one of the least important elements to an original story. You can have a new, fresh, original story in a setting with the old tired elves, dwarves and orcs (look at JourneyQuest, for example), and you can... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Sympathetic Racist Depending on your setting, it might make sense for your character to be racist, it might even make more sense for them to be racist than not to be. For example, in medieval Europe, if someone wasn't a Jew, chances are he was an antisemite. (Look for example at "La Morte d'Arthur" or at "The Poem of t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it a good idea to make the protagonist unlikable while making the supporting characters more likable? Give the reader something to connect to early on, and the protagonist doesn't even need to redeem themselves. (No reason why they shouldn't, it's just that it isn't necessary for not alienating the reader. My favourite example is Humbert Humbert from "Lolita". The man is a paedophile. He's despicabl... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How unadvisable is it to flip the protagonist into a villain? You readers are invested in your character. There are multiple things they like about him, right? Those things cannot just disappear - that would leave your reader angry, frustrated, and feeling betrayed by you. The character's Fall needs to be believable. And after the Fall, there's the question of... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it a deus ex machina if the alternative is illogical? I'd say for this to work, there should be sufficient information before this point for the readers not to see the antagonist as a bad guy. Machiavellian perhaps, but not evil. Then, for the antagonist, it should indeed be the logical solution to let your protagonists go. I mean, they fought against ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do I get my readers through the early, "hardship" part of my fiction? One way would be to condense the "Kansas" part as much as possible. I don't have "The Wizard of Oz" on me, but let's look at "The Hobbit" as a similar example. It starts with about two pages of what are hobbtis. Bilbo is established in one paragraph: > "This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Listing character traits Character traits should be seen. Absolutely. Being told that someone is smart isn't enough - he has to use his brains. However, can you sometimes tell rather than show traits? Let me show you some positive examples: > "This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What should I do when I am stuck on names during freewriting? I often face the same problem with finding names, not just for characters, but also for places, titles, etc. In such cases, I use a temporary name, and specific markup, to make those temporary names easy to find later. For example > {Alpha} and {Bravo} lived in {TownName} town, {X} leagues from {Cap... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to show a character being bored for multiple chapters without boring the reader Plot doesn't have to move at an even speed. Just as you can slow-motion over an important battle, you can speed up over long periods of time. A couple of paragraphs evoking boredom: staring at the rain, practising magic, staring at nature some more, counting days, whatever. Then move on to whatever e... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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Writing diversity I am writing a military sci-fi novel about an international military force facing aliens. My cast is very diverse: the MC is Yemenite-Israeli, his love interest is German, his room-mates are from Georgia (the country - not the American state), Mexico and Ireland, the squad leader is Asian-American, a... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |