Activity for Secespitus
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer | — |
A: Job description for my employment reference In what context did you work? Those interfaces have probably been in the context of a certain topic. What kind of software did you analyze and optimize? Was it financial software? Something in the game industry? ERP? You have said much about the technology that you have worked with so far, but you ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Alternatives to second-person POV narration in RPG settings If the scene allows for it you should portray feelings other characters or creatures might have when entering a scene. A bar man that is obviously not concerned in the least bit by a brewing fight between patrons, city guards shaking in fear at the sight of the old man slowly walking down the street,... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is it bad to describe a character long after their introduction? Personally the dissonance whenever I have imagined a character for hours and maybe thought about their stories throughout some days because I can't read a book straight in one go is the biggest problem. It's very irritating because some part of me wants to scratch all that I have thought about throug... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: If I wouldn't want to read the story, is writing it still a good idea? It's often a good idea to note your ideas down the moment you have them and then look at them at a later point. This makes sure that you have an interest in it that lasts long enough to actually get something done and you can change some of the biggest things. Most stories are re-written / edited qui... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to invoke interest in readers for second part of story when first part is not so popular + old? It can't hurt to try. If you have an idea for a story you can do it. For example there may still be some people around that have you "bookmarked" or are "following" you or whatever the system to keep track of authors / stories you are interested in is called where you want to post it. Maybe you are ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How many blank lines before scene headings (and secondary scene headings) using Amazon Storywriter Two blank lines - be consistent! You asked the same question on some other, more specialised, sites, so I am looking through them and some others to consolidate the knowledge here for future readers on Writing.SE or others that may come across your question and want to see whether one of the three s... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Can I bring back Planetary Romance as a genre? What did you think the term was supposed to mean when you first came across it? You only found the term "[e]arlier this year" and you are writing a story in that genre. You are far more knowledgeable about the details of genres close to your story than the average Joe that is supposed to read this. ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write Arabic in dialogue for an English piece? As you are mainly writing in English your target audience is probably from English speaking countries without a lot of knowledge about Arabic. It's not a common language to learn when compared to something like French or Spanish as far as I am aware of. As such you should be careful about using a lan... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How can I introduce the names of fantasy creatures to the reader? The easiest way is to have someone say the name while looking at the animal and having a frame in your comic where the animal is the center. If you have an animal that plays the role that cats play in our real world for example you could have someone angrily say "Get the damn qutie from our table!" w... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Tiptoe or tiphoof? Adjusting words to better fit fantasy races Doing something like this occasionally can be pretty entertaining, but if be careful when inventing new words: too many new words can make your book hard to read. If the people in your world invented certain words because something "unrealistic" is completely normal there than it's fine if the word ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Stereotypical names The problem about this is that most of the time we want to read something about special people. Sure, we want to be able to sympathize with the character and for example superhero comics have a history of making it look like everyone could be Superman - or Shazam) the 14-year-old-boy-transformed-into... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Using substitution ciphers to generate new alphabets in a novel For most people this would be either annoying or far too simple to be interesting. Many people will know a little bit about substitution ciphers and leet speak. Those are quite often taught in school or used to exchange "secret" messages that teachers / parents / ... aren't supposed to read when pap... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is it advisable to write a teaser for your blog posts? Many readers will not read everything you are writing. They will skim through everything you present them and will decide which of the things interest them and which do not. The most important way to get readers to decide whether they want to read your blog post is the title. In general it should be ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to collect scattered ideas on various topics in to a blog post/ writing article? You don't necessarily need to focus on one topic. Many blogs are about one specific topic and use that to attract their readers, but there are also other types or blogs that are more focused on you as the author. For example because you have an interested writing style or are good at picking up trend... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How do I mix linear and non-linear "choices" in an interactive novel? It depends on the medium. I just looked through the example you provided in the comment section and it seems to me like the non-choices basically do the same that the normally limited space in a text box would do: they give the reader a couple sentences at most before he has to proceed with the stand... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Would a full service PoD company include a literary agent? It may be a scam When I read your question I was reminded of all those scam questions over at Money.SE - you mention that you contacted the first two of those companies and then the third contacted you? Here are your paragraphs about the third company with an emphasis added by me about everything I ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Mariner Software for writers Looking at the comment section you are worried about a sort of vendor lock-in - having your data in a format that nothing else can work with and getting problems when an update messes up your data or the company goes bancrupt, leaving you with useless files that nobody can decipher, which means a lot... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How can I make the plagiarism detector "Ithenticate" identify "θ-continuous" as a single word? You can't I looked through the web, searching for information about problems with Ithenticate and symbols or greek letter, and I couldn't find any information about how to change the bahviour of Ithenticate in such a way. You should probably just try to reduce the index through other means. To copy ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to do a global find and replace in Ulysses You can't use the global search for a global "search and replace" As this deleted answer states you can find the official documentation here. It doesn't mention this function, only the "Search for Menu Actions" under the point "One Shortcut to Find Them All". The way this is phrased already suggests... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Show applied preset where the cursor is? Not yet on Windows - Scrivener 3 (Q2 2019 for Windows) will have this I looked through the documentation that I could find and apparently there is no such feature right now for the windows version of Scrivener. The developers mentioned this in their blog post Scrivener 3: Doing it with Style(s). I'l... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to include external references when writing internal documentation? This depends largely on the way existing documentation is written. Normally you have some kind of template that you can use for most documents. This template should illustrate how to cite external references. In case it does not show you how to do it you should have a look at other documents or for e... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What should tie a collection of short-stories together? The most common and easy way to identify which stories belong together is the genre as you have already identified. Therefore I won't say anything more on that topic. The next common way is to have the same topic. You are free to choose whatever topic you find interesting here: the standard The Hero... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: When two POV characters meet In the end it's up to you, but I think you haven't explored all of your options so far. You could also alternate between the characters views to show how different the situation feels for both of them. This makes it intense for the reader because they can read both points of view without anything fee... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write a puzzle without being too descriptive or vague? The creation of a good puzzle depends a lot on the specifics of the puzzle and your intended audience and medium of presentation. Let's take Puzzling.SE as an example, as you've used that in your question. The folks over at Puzzling.SE wondered something similar as you do and decided to post their cr... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What should go into a White Paper? From Wikipedia: > A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that informs readers concisely about a complex issue and presents the issuing body's philosophy on the matter. It is meant to help readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. Basically to write a "White Paper"... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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In which countries do printed fantasy novels sell the most? I tried to find sales figures about printed fantasy novels and how they compare among different countries, but I couldn't find anything in that regard. I can find generic statistics about how the American market for SF&F is evolving over the past years. Or how the European book market grew in recent... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Do I really need to have a scientific explanation for my premise? Spiderman was bitten by a spider and developed spider-like abilities. Superman is from a different planet and afraid of a glowing rock, even if this human-like creature can shoot lasers from his eyes. The Incredible Hulk is... Hulk... If you are looking for a non-comic example take a look at the Met... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How much does translating a novel cost? I've read that writers and editors are often paid on a per-word basis. Then I did a search about the cost of translating a literary work into a different language and I've found varying information. For example in this thread on proz.com mentions a price model on a per-word basis, a price model on a ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: When should we redefine a term that's used in a different way in the book we're writing? Just redefining a word from everyday usage is rarely good. People will always first associate it with their real-life usage. Maybe switch around a few letters to make it a new "fantasy" word. About defining the term and the POV: that's really up to you and the POV you are already using. Some author... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Should the length of the different parts of a novel be distributed equally? There are many ways to structure a literary work. For example in school I learned about the Dramatic Structure according to Freytag. Most books don't fall neatly in such a category though. And there certainly isn't something like a percentage you need to keep track of. I've written here on StackExcha... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to write a Stack Exchange Question? Asking a good question is a lot harder than writing a good answer, even if writing a good answer likely requires more research and more experience, which makes them very valuable. So let's have a look at what's important in writing a good question as opposed to an acceptable question. You already men... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: When a story is longer than a book, is it best to wait until the entire story is done before completing the first book in the story? If you already have the outline of the final story and haven't done major rewrites of that for some time you could think about splitting it up. Some details will surely change, but in general for the big things you know what will happen when and you will have already laid out the foundation in the fi... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Avoiding burnout As a software developer and hobby writer / game designer I have encountered this already a few times - with the same temporary solution of reducing the amount of time I sleep. Especially when there are a few very important things in the "normal" day-to-day life that need to be taken care of this beco... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Problems with picture alignment in Microsoft Word - which other DTP software can I use? It likely depends on the field you are in and the amount of work and money you want to put into learning a new tool if you have only used Microsoft Word so far for this kind of task. For example in the technical and scientific community you normally find a lot of fans of LaTex, which is free for any... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How many words do visual novels contain on average per hour of gameplay? Very short and incredibly rough estimate: 10.000 words are around 1 hour play time. After some research I've found that the answer is... even more difficult than I had first imagined... First of all some statistics that I have found about the visual novel Fate/Stay Night, one of the longest visual... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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How many words do visual novels contain on average per hour of gameplay? I've seen a few visual novels on Steam and Kickstarter that mentioned how many words they already contain and what they are planning for the final amount. The problem is: I have no idea how those numbers compare to other games. As I am currently doing some research about the creation process of visua... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Documenting story in a videogame A lot of this depends on what kind of game you are creating. For example there is software that is specifically designed to help you with non-linear story design. See my answer to the question " Writing Beta Any software for video game non-linear story design?" for more details, but basically you wil... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: In what order should I name characters? You are writing in the order that is important in that situation. There is no clear rule and you can vary from situation to situation. For example you could simply start with the first one to enter the room: > Bob was the first to get to the party. A few minutes later John appeared and both of them... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: 'The Chosen One' paradox It's not a paradox - it's a choice You, as the author and creator of your specific fictional world, have the choice to define which of these statements is true. There is no inherent reason to assume one or the other is true and that the other one is false. In fact, it's often used as an important pl... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What software/techniques do people use to gather ideas? Use a wiki Many people are using a wiki when they are creating their worlds, as can be seen by this answer to the question What software is available for keeping and organising notes about your world? on WorldBuilding.SE. > The biggest one is MediaWiki (the power behind Wikipedia). MediaWiki can be... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What do you do when your message could be dangerous? If you don't want people rioting in the streets you should show how people are rioting in the streets in your novel - and how that way utterly fails to achieve what the people wanted to achieve. Discourage the obvious, easy ways that you already see, the horrible and dangerous paths that people may ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to make sure that my reader has not forgotten an incident or character which was described earlier and referenced much later in the writing? You don't have to rely solely on your readers memory - you can rely on your characters memory. Just have your characters or narrator repeat the most important parts and show how the former little, seemingly irrelevant, incident relates to the current dramatic scene. Your characters won't just accept... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Sending an email to follow up with the client about a project deadline Ask your manager This depends on lots of things, such as how long you've been waiting, how often you communicate with the client anyway, how clear the communication was that you can't proceed, how far away your client is/ whether the client is in a different timezone, your work culture, their work c... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Arousing Emotion in Readers The first step to arouse any kind of emotion in your reader is to make the character relatable. If your readers can't relate to your character it doesn't matter what you do to the character, your readers won't feel a thing. If your villain just entered the stage and is angry at someone without any cl... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Disposable Characters Your premise is flawed: the characters that are killed are not disposable in the sense that it doesn't matter whether they are killed or not. Quite often they are peoples favourites, which makes them perfect candidates to raise the stakes for the reader. By making it harder to anticipate what charac... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Mixing humour with horror in fiction The problem is that you are mixing two fundamentally different genres. If I want to read a funny story I am not in the mood for horror - I want jokes and the problem of not laughing out while on the bus. If I am reading horror I don't want all the suspense to be resolved by some joke that leaves me h... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Can you have too many story arcs running at the same time? There is no general rule. I am currently reading a book that has half a dozen named characters, sometimes close to each other or even in the same location, sometimes far away from each other with the occasional point-of-view of someone mostly unrelated. The author is doing a great job of making sure ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Where do I start? Whatever feels right. You could also write the start of each chapter and slowly fill each one out. This way you start with the rough outline, then move to a roadmap with small steps, and then you just try to fill in the gaps. This allows you to have a better overview of the goal you are trying to acc... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Rewriting User Guides as Stories You are referencing rule books for RPGs, so I am going to base my answer on those as examples, because I know the fascination of reading those books without playing the corresponding games. There are a few reasons that make rulebooks interesting for me: - Artwork A lot of rulebooks for RPGs have ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Can I plug a loophole in my magic rules without rewriting the whole novel? Religion, time and blackmailing Have your world feature a religion that forbids the use of certain kinds of magical practices that would use your loopholes. The in-universe explanation would be that the church or whatever institution you want feared that people were too powerful and therefore uncont... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |