Activity for Secespitus
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer | — |
A: Diversity conflicting with authenticity You can't. You have a cast of characters that will work for your story. Now you see that those characters are not as diverse as today's media makes you feel is necessary. So you want to change something about the cast that you already decided is good for your story. This is Tokenism. If the settin... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What to do when my preview exceeds the requested submission length? A general guideline that is used for anything that has to do with "limits", no matter if it's about the amount of words allowed or the amount of pages allowed is that you can have +/- 10%. Everything within that range is most likely acceptable, especially when it's already a considerable length. We a... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How many points are sufficient for my essay? A very generic guideline that is often used is to have three arguments/aspects/... This is often structured in the form of a Five-Paragraph-Essay where you have one paragraph that you use to introduce the general topic of the essay, then three different paragraphs exploring each argument/aspect/posit... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to derive a first sentence from a story? As you have already stated the most important part is to have the finished story ready so that you really know what will happen - plans are great, but they never survive the first contact with a beta reader. Beta readers are an important aspect of finding out what fits your style. Especially because... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to write a PG13 Succubus character? Happiness You can choose to go a more traditional route of having a succubus as a sort of dream eater. Instead of wet dreams you could then just make the Succubus long for any kind of nice dream. An oversimplified example would be to have it eat the dreams of kids that they will win some contest. T... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to avoid writing irritating fan fictions? Depending on the forum you post your fanfiction you will get those comments no matter what you do. It's a sad fact, but there are many people out there who just want to make others feel miserable and growing a thick skin when posting on the internet is a skill that you might need. Other than that it... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to make side-characters look competent next to the chosen one? You need to think about your protagonists weaknesses – now! If your protagonist is simply above and beyond everything and everybody else it will get really, really boring. Your character needs some form of development, some things to strive for. Dave has to be better in something, and that something... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What are the signs of accidental self insertion? You should make a list of the most important conflict points that your character will have to face throughout the book. It's important to be able to tell beforehand roughly which problems your character has to face and overcome - if there is nothing to overcome the character is too powerful and/or yo... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Any software for video game non-linear story design? articy:draft from Nevigo The software is specifically designed for writing in a software development environment. It has things like asset management so that you can manage all your characters with everything important you want to keep in mind about them in one place, the ability to write branching ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do you stop capitalizing the first two letters on Scrivener? This is not a feature that you have to turn on in Scrivener - it's a general setting you have to use in Mac and apps like Scrivener would have to use this setting From macworld.com: "How to fix typing two capitals in a row at a word’s start": > OS X does offer this setting system-wide as part of au... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to describe sound? If you are having problems with describing sound leave it to the imagination of your readers - just state what is causing the sound. If your characters can see or simply know that it's an oar hitting the water he can state for example how loud the sound of the oar hitting the water is or how the wat... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Describing something that doesn't exist Only describe the important stuff that will play a role later and gloss over everything else with very broad descriptions - readers prefer their own mental image if it's not relevant for the story. It's enough to use terms and phrases such as "futuristic", "very sleek" and "complete glass hood" to g... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Slow buildup vs sudden introduction The way you describe them they are not different You mention that one of the options is about building up small steps, hinting at the fact that he will unlock something. The other option is about having small steps, which are hard to see, that you are hinting at with him learning something. These ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Describe illustrated characters? Think about people who may use a screenreader (or like audiobooks) E-Books are very important and a lot of books are sold as hard-copies and as e-books alike. This allows people with a disability to "read" books, for example by using a screenreader. (That's also why it's important on sites like Stac... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Steps for writing a coherent letter ("Brief") in german? A German letter is not much different from a letter in any other language. The first thing to be aware of is whether it is in an official context or in a private context. For example if you are writing a letter of application where you don't know the person that might read your letter you might want... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Multiple ways to emphasise words There are a couple of ways that you could utilize, but changing the style often comes with problems. Some of these problems you have already encountered: - bold text is very nice to draw attention to something, but it's the kind of attention that draws the eyes of the reader across the whole page - ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Should I describe a person or a room first? Most of the time you will want to set the scene first In general you will want to describe whatever is stationary first so that the readers mind will be focused on whatever is supposed to be important in the following paragraphs. Most of the time you will want to describe the room first, then things... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Dead parents: something to avoid? You should show how they interact with your protagonist before to give the reader a feeling for the importance of these characters. Everyone knows that parents are important, but highlighting the bond between the character and his parents is important to make the reader feel the importance. Afterwar... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to confidently attract the other party to your side? > Together nothing can stop us. The problem with your intial idea is that you are saying that you are invincible for them. You are positioning yourself as a threat that can't be overcome, challenging them and at the same time insulting their abilities by mocking that they won't ever be able to be on... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to link two sentences? You should add a but after the comma > Anyone can use stock footage, but only you know how to use it correctly. Reading a but basically makes people ignore most of what has been said before and focus their attention on what is being said after the but. This way you can emphasize that while anyone c... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How can I write a review? You can't be one hundred percent sure that you don't have any mistakes in your writing. It's the same as with testing a program - you can find bugs and be certain that a version therefore has flaws, but there will almost always be things you just can't test, because you don't have the time to fully c... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Should creativity or eloquence in a technical document be removed during review? The goal of a technical documentation is to tell the reader what they need to know to continue working. They are not interested in reading a nice play on words or particularly interesting ways to phrase something. They are looking for a text that's easy to parse so that they can find what they are se... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do I find logical errors in my novel? Many people have a list of the most important things, like the overall story-arc and when to reveal which part of the plot so that it's easy to see and check these things. It's also a good idea to have a list for your characters with little notes about their characteristics from a physical and mental... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Working with hints/clues - Show vs Tell vs Nothing -ish You switched your style without having any reason to do so - just continue showing this via the characters thoughts It's the first time your characters encounters this reocurring thing. Just describe it like it's the first time. Maybe you just copy-paste the same passage that you used the first time... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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Where can I find resources about writing a litRPG book? Where can I find (preferably free) online resources, such as How-To-Write or styleguide articles and blogs, about writing a litRPG book? LitRPG, or Literary Role Playing Game, books combine elements that you would find in RPGs with science-fiction or fantasy. This means that the reader is made aware... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Horror story for a game - how to create dread? Play with visual cues Darkness is (an authors) friend when it comes to horror. Your reader/player can't see what's in front of them, which plays together with the \fear of the unknown already mentioned by @AlexandroChen. But it's more than that: the change of lighting will make your player prefer to... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What editor can I use for world building that has a tree-like structure for my files? Based on the answers, specifically this answer to the question What software is available for keeping and organising notes about your world? on our sister site WorldBuilding.SE I would recommend checking out Realm Works as you say you have already tried different wiki solutions. Realm Works is desig... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad idea to mix psychological horror with action? You should focus on one aspect and make it available in slightly augmented form in the other phases, too - or simply think about whether you really need those two parts The problem is that you are proposing two very different approaches. Rushing through everything with brute force can be great fun a... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to design a skill system for a litRPG book? It only prevents development if the earning of new experience stagnates. As in most RPG's the challenges your characters face should become harder and harder, which means that they will earn more experience with each higher-level encounter. If you would like some guidance as to how this could be do... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How do I write in English if it's not native for me? This may depend on the specific context and personal preference. My experience regarding writing Blog articles comes mainly from a couple of fiction short stories, which is quite different from what you are doing. When writing fiction I write in English from the start because I don't intend do publi... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What's next when it comes to poems? The next step would be to get a wider audience. Having people on Facebook and YouTube that read your stuff is already pretty good. Many people also have a Blog where they post their stuff. You could also have a look out for opportunities in your city - maybe there are local clubs for poets, similar t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Software to draw plot structure charts I'll borrow an idea Memor-X pointed out to me in my question Are there tools that can aid an author in writing a branching storyline?: yEd It's a free tool that allows you to create flowcharts. I'm currently using it to create part of my D&D campaign. You can easily create for example a box/star/.... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What are the stages between publishing a book on KDP and producing an audiobook? The article Should You Turn Your Book Into an Audiobook on Audible? by Matt Stone gives some insights into things that may be difficult when you want to turn your self-published book into a self-published audiobook. Here is some information that may be interesting for the scope of this question: > I... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Ethics of using poorly-redacted information in public documents Looking at the ethics code posted in the comments by @MarkBaker which can be found here you can see that there is no clear indication about your specific case. Especially because we can't possibly know exactly what you are writing we can't give you any concrete feedback and you should be cautious abo... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Would publishing my book like the "Stacks Project" increase the readership of my book? > Will it increase readership of my book if I rewrite it using the same software as Stacks Project book to make it available as interactive HTML on the Web in addition to currently available PDF? Yes, in theory more channels = more ways to discover your work Nobody can give you a definite answer to... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Can I add Drop Caps to my manuscript in the Storyist program? Not quite, you can add Drop Caps to the CSS of the ePub file that Storyist generates for you This Storyist forum gives an example of how to modify the CSS for your .ePub file (which is just a zip that you can unzip to see the individual files) to add Drop Caps: > ### Adding drop caps to the start o... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How can I (or can I?) create a Canva.com cover for a CreateSpace 6"x9" title? First of all: you can HypnoThyroidWriter.com has an article specifically for this called Journal creation — a marriage of Canva & CreateSpace templates for Word. Apparently the author of that article even wrote a book specifically about this topic called Create stunning journals & workbooks using Ca... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to zoom text in Scrivenings mode without changing the actual font? This is not intended behaviour. The zoom function should work the way you were expecting it to work. This is simply a bug. If you see such a behaviour and it is not solved by closing and restarting the software and your PC you should first see if there is a newer version available to check whether t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is it okay if I wrote a story based on true historical events? Yes, this is commonly called "Alternate History" To cite from Wikipedia: > Alternate history or alternative history (Commonwealth English), sometimes abbreviated as AH, is a genre of fiction consisting of stories in which one or more historical events occur differently. These stories usually contai... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How should I set the inside margin for my 5x8" book with Createspace? The exact details don't matter, these are just guidelines. I looked at a few discusions from the CreateSpace community. The most helpful one is this one. You can see the different recommended inner margin values: - up to 150 pages: 0.375" - 151 - 400 pages: 0.75" - 401 - 600 pages: 0.875" - more t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What paper stock should I use for the soft cover of my book? Looking at companies that offer to print and laminate books you can find out what typical paper stocks are used. For example the site printabook.ca mentions: > 300gsm art stock (option for gloss or matt laminate to increase durability) The site printninja.com gives a comparison of the different ki... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is the website allpoetry.com benefecial for poets and writers? I've had a look at allpoetry.com, a few review sites such as sitejabber.com and sites reporting about it such as PlagiarismToday.com. On their registration site they mention quite a huge number of members - "Over 500,000 poets get feedback and improve their poetry". I couldn't find any information a... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Scrivener changes my font size This is simply a bug, not intended behaviour, which is why nobody here can give you a definite answer about how to make it stop. If you see such a behaviour try to file a bug report on their bug reporting site. Be sure to include the important information, such as the version of the software you are ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Scrivener: Play gifs? To expand on the comment from Lew from this page: Scrivener does not allow you to play gifs directly, neither in your research folder, nor when embedded in a page. I've looked through a few sites and discussions such as this one or this one or this one - but none of them describe your scenario and t... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Are there custom placeholders in Ulysses app? Ulysses does not support placeholders directly and there are no simple shortcuts that would create a placeholder. You would have to use your own implementation. For things to keep track of when using such a custom method have a look at my answer to the question What should I do when I am stuck on na... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Giving a character a name that is based on his storyline This is a perfectly reasonable way to name your character and introduce the name with a little backstory. Some people will call it cheesy. Some people will say that it lacks originality. But all stories are always just retellings of what someone else previously wrote. Your goal should be to give it ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: What language should I write my programming blog post in? There is no definite answer - you already mentioned the most important points English means a bigger audience. Most of the world can speak English and can therefore understand you, which leads to a far bigger audience. The bigger audience also means that the quality is potentially higher - more peop... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Pretty flowers with clunky Latin names Most plants have some commonly used names as humans don't really want to use weird latin descriptions in their everyday conversations. A quick look on Wikipedia for Vachellia tortilis for example yields (emphasis mine): > Vachellia tortilis, widely known as Acacia tortilis but attributed by APG III ... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Is First person perspective more intimate than Third person perspective? First Person means that you are stuck with that one person and its look on the world. This can mean a lot more intimacy, especially in situations that show the emotions of this one person. But a good author is able to show these emotions in dialogue and in actions between characters and can therefore... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: Can reading Franz Kafka help uninspired comedians? Read a lot and write a lot - that's the most basic advice you can get for any question about "How can I become a better writer?". It's important to understand that you need practice to get better. Writing is no different than any sport or other hobby/profession you may pick up. Reading diverse genre... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |