Activity for Galastel‭

Type	On...	Excerpt	Status	Date
Answer	—	A: Early investment in a character who "learns better" What positive character traits does your MC have? Surely he isn't all bad, a one-dimensional caricature of schmuckiness? Consider: in The Three Musketeers, d'Artagnan beats his servant (and Athos threatens his with a pistol), d'Artagnan rapes Milady (after Athos attempts to murder her, and before th... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to create an open frame story? I'm getting the impression that you're not looking for a story, so much as a world, a framework in which stories can take place. Consider, then: what is that world like? Our world (more or less)? Our world + supernatural stuff? Futuristic? Past? Fantasy world with fantasy races? Once you have the ge... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to describe movement in zero-G? Describing something is significantly easier if you can look at it - you find words for what you're seeing, you form associations. Quite a few astronauts publish short videos from the ISS. Here's one example, with astronaut Chris Hadfield. These videos let you see what it's like to be in a microgravi... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to make literature review for a software implementation project? Any source that you use in your work, be it academic literature, websites, or even tv programs, needs to be cited. Similar projects are extremely relevant to what you're doing, and therefore if your source on them is a website rather than an academic work, it should definitely be cited. When you cit... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Question	—	How does one discovery-write court intrigue? Intrigue (any kind, really, but royal courts were particularly known for it) is a series of setups that lead to a pay-off. For example, a handkerchief moved from one room to another, a word whispered, a letter falsified, are setups that lead to, for example, one dead Desdemona. When one is a plotter... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Split up the section or flow straight through It all depends on how you choose to tell your story. Are you telling it all in first person, as if the main character is recounting what happened to her? Then it would be strange if you suddenly jumped to follow someone else. If on the other hand, you have an omniscient narrator - a narrator who fol... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Is my story pacing too fast? My impression is that you've got so much going on in so few words, that you never really allow the reader to settle down and experience a scene, understand what's going on, go through your character's thoughts and feelings. Every one of the events you describe should have some sort of buildup, and so... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can you write when you're upset? Writing is where I run to, from everything that upsets me. I read the last scene I've been writing , from the beginning, and by the end - I'm in that moment, I've found my focus, I can proceed from there. Sometimes I channel frustration, anger, pain, disappointment into my writing: the story demands... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Creating fictional names - bands, hotels and companies If what you're looking for is not stand-ins for real places, but just a generic place for your characters to be in, look at how real company names, real hotel names, real band names etc. are formed. Companies often have a name formed around the product they sell (such as Toys-R-Us) or the founders' ... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Writing compelling dialogue Surprisingly, dialogue tags are language-specific. In English, 'said' is considered transparent, the dialogue tag to be used most of the time, as opposed to "intoned", "articulated" etc., which are to be used sparingly. In French, on the other hand, using "said" all the time is considered to show lac... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: first point of view and the problem of opinion As others have explained, if a story is written in first person, the readers expect to be privy to the POV character's opinions, thoughts and feelings. This is true of third person limited too, and even an omniscient narrator would get into characters' heads. However, this does not preclude the read... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Is there a practical time limit on a children's book meant to be read out loud? I'd say parents might not buy an 8-year-old a book for reading it out loud at all. Regardless of length. An 8-year-old can read, and read well. He has no need for someone to read a book out loud to him. In fact, a child might well be offended by the notion of having someone read to him - he's big now... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: A children's book that takes 25 minutes to read out loud - is it too long? If anything, I'd say your book is too short for that age. 3rd grade is 8-years-olds, right? At that age, 25 minutes to read out loud is closer to one chapter of a book they'd be reading. At 8 years old, my favourite books were Sans Famille, White Fang and Narnia (all of it, except for the last book,... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How can I keep my writing from being perceived as "too complicated" I don't think you're going to like hearing this, but part of the problem with your writing is bad grammar. Now, English isn't your first language, and you're 12. It's perfectly OK for you to make mistakes. But the thing is, simple sentence structures are more forgiving. When you use more complex sent... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How does an author write in hand gestures and non-verbal communication? Some gestures are universally understood. For example: > He nodded. or > The audience burst in applause. Because those gestures are universally understood, giving them description or explanation is redundant: you wouldn't say "he moved his head up and down, signifying assent". On the other side ... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Can there be written narratives (not movies or films, but books) without any narrator? A story is a narrative - an account of connected events. Somebody is giving that account - there's no avoiding that. There you've got your narrator. Even a newspaper, which seeks to make the journalist impartial and transparent, there's still the person reporting on what happened, recounting it, narr... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to give cartography information in a fantasy setting without being too precise? In Uprooted, Naomi Novik deals quite elegantly with this issue. First, she doesn't dump all the information at once, but sprinkles it where it's relevant. > We lived in Dvernik, which wasn't the biggest village in the valley or the smallest, or the one nearest the Wood: we were seven miles away. Th... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How should I deal with travel time in fantasy? There are three ways you can deal with long journeys. First, skipping time is a time-honoured tradition. If nothing happens during the time of travel, you can just skip it. It is quite common to read things like: > They have been travelling for two weeks when... or > On the third day of their jou... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How do you get over the fear of exposing yourself in writing? I have resorted more than once to citing Neil Gaiman's 2012 address Make Good Art. Let me quote from it here too: > 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 you... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Can fanfics be bestsellers? The main obstacle to fanfics flooding the market is copyright. As long as the original author holds the copyright for their work, fanfics can only live as free stuff on the internet. (Or, as Kirk points out, they can be "reskinned", "retooled", so they're not obviously recognisable as fanfic. In whic... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to write internally emotional characters? The problem I see with your writing, the answer to your question, is that you need to immerse yourself in your character's emotion. Put yourself in that emotional experience, in that moment. What do you feel? Your thoughts? Your responses? Your associations? Your visceral desires? To use your exampl... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Everything I write ends up being a rhyming poem, or lyrics maybe So you want to write the story of your life, but are more comfortable with verse than with prose? Why not think of it as a strength rather than a weakness? You're expressing your life in verse, right? Then why not take that verse, arrange it in a way that makes sense, add a couple of sentences to con... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Question	—	What is genre, and why should we care? Here I came upon an argument about whether a particular grouping is a genre, or a marketing term. Which made me wonder - what is genre? How strict is this taxonomy, and what purpose does it serve? I mean, is it for marketing (in which case the aforementioned argument has its answer in the market), or... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: If a main character is writing the story, can I change who writes the story in the next chapter? First person serves best to help the reader identify with the character, it minimises the distance between the audience and the protagonist. Is that the kind of connection you want between the reader and the antagonist as well? That's an option, so long as that's a conscious decision on your part. S... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Writing about a topic which you don't have personal experience in The first answer to your question, as everybody else is pointing out, is research. Anything you don't know about, research. Read about it to get a general picture. Look for first-hand accounts (people you can interview, youtube, written accounts). In particular, note when first-hand accounts differ o... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to write female characters as a male writer? Women, like men, are quite diverse. Some are more introspective, some are less. Some think about their feelings, and why they feel a certain way, others are more concerned with their career and how to solve that problem in the lab. Don't think of writing a woman - think of writing a person. Find out ... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: It seems safer to make everyone white then to be accused of 'racism' if I I make any of my pre-written cultures a different race Videogame, in a fantasy world that isn't our world. Why not make people blue, red, green? Who says their biology and skin colours have to conform to earth's? In fact, then you'd have a number of "races" (whatever "race" means), but you wouldn't be in any way tied to earth's stereotypes. You definite... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Can a book with a lot of action be annoying? If you give the audience action, you've got to give some reason to care for that action. I wouldn't want to be reading about a whole lot of violence between some people I know nothing about - I'd have no stake in that violence, no one to root for. I wouldn't be particularly interested to find out whe... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Avoiding spectacle creep There are more things you can do with stakes than escalate ad nauseam. First, you can vary the threat. For example, Buffy jokes more than once about "saving the world again". The difference comes from saving the world from different things; a new threat might require a new approach, pose a tougher c... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: How to write female characters with agency? Woman here. :) I think what your female character would struggle with most is that suddenly she does need her man beside her - for safety, for being treated a certain way by other people, etc. It doesn't matter how feminine she was in the 23rd century, it doesn't matter if she liked cooking and stay... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	A: Averting Protagonist-Centred Morality I think you misunderstand what Protagonist-Centred Morality is. It's not just that the narrative "encourages the audience to root for the protagonist despite the immoral and unethical actions". You get Protagonist-Centred Morality when the whole narrative's moral compass appears to point not north, b... (more)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Question	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Question	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago
Answer	—	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)	—	about 6 years ago

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