Activity for celtschk
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit | Post #39479 |
Post edited: Fixed typos |
— | about 1 year ago |
| Comment | Post #286098 |
Your link that says "proven" links to a site that asserts it, but shows no proof. Note that I'm not claiming it's not true, maybe it even has been proven, but the site you link to does not do so, nor, as far as I can see, cite such a proof.
Anyway, the texts you quote are from literary works, ther... (more) |
— | about 1 year ago |
| Edit | Post #281837 | Initial revision | — | over 2 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Text Editors. Suggesting & Tracking Changes to Plain-Text Documents If it is about text changes, I'd use diff files (in particular the “unified diff” format which also many version control systems use), with a caveat mentioned below. You can create the diff file by keeping the unedited file besides the edited file, and then use the `diff` utility, redirecting the out... (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281079 |
Post edited: |
— | over 2 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281079 | Initial revision | — | over 2 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What is the possessive form of et al.? Just use the other possessive form: > The paper of Einstein et al. stated the opposite conclusion. Although it would read better if you replaced “of” with “by”, but then it would no longer be a possessive case, and thus violate your (rather strange) restriction. (more) |
— | over 2 years ago |
| Edit | Post #28127 |
Post edited: Slightly improved the text |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #37023 |
Post edited: Slightly corrected/expanded the post |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #7841 |
Post edited: Introduced paragraph breaks, added a sentence about third-person limited narrators |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279313 | Initial revision | — | about 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Old meta questions are incorrectly marked as imported in the user profile I just noticed that some of my old meta questions here are marked as imported on my profile page, although they clearly weren't (they were meta questions about this site; there's no reason why I would have asked about it on SE). Here's a screenshot showing an example: Screenshot of question inc... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279085 |
Done: https://meta.codidact.com/questions/279094 (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279085 |
Ah, thanks. There seem to be no shortcuts related to editing, though, therefore they also cannot fail in that case. But I noticed one unrelated problem: With "go to category" (g c), only the category list seems to work (g c c), not the individual categories (like g c 1). (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279085 |
Actually up to now I wasn't even aware of the existence of keyboard shortcuts. I found the option to enable them in the preferences, but I can't find any description of what shortcuts are available. (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279078 |
Thank you. BTW, what is the quickest way to get up to date with what happened in the mean time? (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279085 |
Thanks for the reply. Actually I'm a laptop user, so I can both tap (on the touchpad) and click (on the “mouse” buttons below the touchpad). So that workaround works. A keyboard-only workaround is, of course, to just add the corresponding MarkDown manually. (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279082 | Initial revision | — | about 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Finishing link entry with enter sends the post instead I just got caught by something I consider a bug: I wanted to link to a web site, and used the link button above the entry box to do so. After I finished entering (or rather, pasting) the link into the pop-up box, I pressed enter to get it into the post. To my great surprise, this didn't cause the ... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279079 |
Post edited: |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279079 | Initial revision | — | about 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: mice don't tap and tablet-users don't click: what word can I use for all audiences instead? I just looked up what Borland wrote in their user manual of the Turbo Pascal UI back when using a mouse was optional and the UI could be operated also by keyboard (you don't click on the keyboard either). The word they used for buttons was “choose”. For example, this is an excerpt from their manual: ... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279078 | Initial revision | — | about 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Move old writing challenges to writing challenge category? I've been away for some time (for personal reasons), and noticed that we now have a category “writing challenges”. Now there are some old challenges in Meta which predate that category, but IMHO would be more logically placed there. Therefore my question: Should they be moved to that category? Is ... (more) |
— | about 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39536 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Spammers have found this site! I just noticed that when you go to the users page and select the age tab, the start of the list is dominated by user names that are obvious spam. While they are not very effective because few people are likely to see them, I still think something should be done about them. All of those seem to ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39532 |
A false belief still can have very real consequences. Consequences that don't simply go away after you learn that your belief was false. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39532 |
For both. Having the reader know is great for a danger the protagonist doesn't know, but I don't think it helps building up tension if the reader already knows that the danger the protagonist believes to be in is actually *not* there. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39532 |
Thank you for the answer. The main reason I don't want to introduce the second viewpoint immediately is that at the beginning, the first protagonist expects that second protagonist to be a likely antagonist. I want to keep that uncertainty about her for some time. If I switched to her viewpoint early... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39531 |
Thank you for your answer. Besides Mistborn, do you have any other suggestions of novels that did introduce a new viewpoint very well? (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39530 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Does a point of view need to be introduced when or right after the character is introduced? In the novel I'm trying to write, I probably will have to introduce a second point of view because my initial main protagonist will be mostly unable to act after some point. Now I'm considering to shift the point of view to another character that is also introduced right in the first chapter. However... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39529 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Why can't I upvote this answer? I tried to upvote this answer but my vote doesn't seem to register. Maybe it is because it is owned by System, but then, there are other answers owned by System that already have upvotes. Note that I don't have any problems to upvote other answers on the same question. (Unrelated observation... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39524 |
@ArtOfCode: Thank you. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39520 |
Thank you. So if I understand correctly, “are a-coming” is sort of a double-continuous form. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39524 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Design changes are a-coming! I just noticed a small problem: When editing a comment, you get a miniscule comment box. Fortunately it can be resized. (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39520 |
What is the difference between “coming” and “a-coming”? I've never before encountered that word.
On the design: That was definitely a good change! (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39518 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to write an introverted main character with accidental charisma That he has no ambitions to heroism or adventure doesn't mean he has no ambitions at all. It just means that his ambitions are of a different type. Maybe he has the ambition to learn everything he can about the plants in his surrounding. Not because he plans to do something specific with that knowled... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39484 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39484 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Please gray out the usernames of automatically-imported accounts on the main Users listing This was originally intended as comment on ArtOfCode's answer, but got too long for that. Listing a name on the site's Users page IMHO very clearly claims that person is a user of the site. Note that this is not about the name displayed under imported posts (those are marked anyway), but about the... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39480 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Is there a formula for creating stakes? Your problem could be summarized as follows: > If your protagonist's life is really totally perfect in any way, he has no reason to change anything. End of story. So if you want to have a story, then the protagonist's life must not be perfect. It may look perfect, but there is still this one li... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39479 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing Challenge: A Long Way Home - Feb 1 2020 - Feb 22 2020 The Earth was not at its place. That was of course impossible. But Alice had checked all the data several times, and the space ship definitely was at the place where the Earth should be. Except that there was no planet at this place. Just empty space. It had been her very first interstellar fli... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39418 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Letting a (secondary) antagonist leave mid story - Should it be avoided? One way to make the leaving of that secondary antagonist satisfying could be if it gives a problem for the protagonist. Now how could an antagonist leaving be a problem? Well, it is a problem if the protagonist's plans against the other antagonists required the presence of that antagonist. Maybe t... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39408 |
That would be great. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39393 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Is anything like the propulsion systems (warp/impulse drives) copyrighted from being use in other sci-fi novels? Disclaimer: I am no lawyer or otherwise law expert, all the following is to the best of my knowledge and does not constitute legal advise; when in doubt, as a lawyer. There are several things to consider. First, the general idea. In the case of Warp drives, the general idea would be: A machine ... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39279 |
I think a preview button (like on Wikipedia) would be an solution that could be implemented much quicker than an SE-like live preview. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39254 |
@ArtOfCode: I'm still not convinced that this is how it works (note also that Stack Exchange *cannot* override copyright law, and the authors don't transfer copyright to SE, they just provide the content to the company under the CC license). Maybe it makes sense to ask an actual lawyer. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39254 |
But in case of an edit history there is **more than one author.** Note that the quote you did explicitly uses the plural, “author name**s**”. Every contributor who did significant modifications is an author. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39251 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can I write better code-based reference documentation for programming interfaces? One possibility on why the readers didn't find the documentation helpful may be that they are unfamiliar to the API, and the reference documentation is the only documentation available. Reference manuals are there for the people who already are familiar with the API, and only have to look up the ... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39250 | Post edited | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39250 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Interface for showing changes in the history is not very discoverable It took me quite a while to discover how to see what was changed in an edit. Some visual clue on how to get it would be a good idea, I think. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39249 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Suggestion: Support edit comments As far as I can tell, there is no way to explain the edit you do. There is no field to enter one. Also, in my latest edit, I tried to supply one as HTML comment in my post, but in the edit history I've seen that it apparently got completely discarded. Please add the edit comments in. I conside... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39243 | Post edited | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39243 | Post edited | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39243 | Post edited | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39243 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Discussion: Edit history from Stack Exchange not imported - copyright problem? I noticed that only the last edit from Stack Exchange is imported, and attributed as a whole to the original poster. I think this is problematic from a copyright point of view, since if other people have made substantial edits to a post, they may also hold a valid copyright at parts of a post. ... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39239 |
@ArtOfCode: Thank you for the explanation. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39239 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Bug - Unable to Import Content [Note: I tried to post this as comment, but for some reason it didn't work] I guess it's because the URL of QPixel has changed; probably the code interfacing to Stack Exchange somewhere contains a hard-coded URL that no longer fits. Which makes me wonder: Could the application auto-determine it... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39233 |
Thank you. I think there's value in having them; it should just be clear that they are Meta. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39229 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Suggestion - clearly mark Meta questions in the Hot Questions box In the hot questions, it is not clear what are actual questions and what are Meta questions (well, if the title starts with Suggestion, it probably is meta). It would be nice if Meta questions would be marked as such, either by a "Meta" prefix similar to the page title, or by grouping Meta questions ... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39225 |
It's not just you. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39228 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Upvoting imported comment - wait for user to join? Will upvotes on imported posts be included in the authors reputation when that user joins? Or does it make sense to wait with upvoting until the user actually joined? (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: I have a name, and no plot So you have Sir Nathaniel Charles III. A nobleman, obviously. Is he from a famous family? Or some minor, not well known nobility? Did he grow up in a castle? Or did his family lose their estates and he grew up in poverty? Did others respect him for his nobility, despise him for it, or not care about ... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Is there a way to make editing enjoyable? See it this way: Your text has problems, if you know them or not. Even the greatest master of the craft will not be able to write a text right out of the box without any problems. Since you know up front that your text has problems, the worst thing that could happen is that you don't find them. And t... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: "Dear Stack Exchange, I am very disappointed in you" - How to construct a strong opening line in a letter? I think there are two important aspects that you should make clear: - That you indeed do care about the issue. Your letter is not just a rant, you sincerely are concerned about the damage the issue does or may do to what you consider important. - Why the addressed should care. The issue is not just... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Is there a "right" way to interpret a novel? If so, how do we make sure our novel is interpreted correctly? As others wrote, you cannot make sure the reader interprets your novel the way you want it to be interpreted. However, you still can influence it. You might read your draft and explicitly look for ways how it might be misinterpreted. You won't find all possible alternative interpretations, but you m... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Pronouns when writing from the point of view of a robot For the writing challenge, I'm currently writing from the point of view of a robot. Also another robot is frequently addressed. However I've hit a problem: Referring to the robots as “it” often gives confusing sentences. It probably doesn't help that one of the robot acquired a human male name (whic... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to write references? If their data is used in your work, you have to reference them. This is important for several reasons: - It shows that you didn't just make up that data on the spot. - It doesn't give the false impression that you gathered the data yourself. If you didn't do something, you should not pretend to hav... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What are some standards in naming a software/hardware version? Software numbering There are lots of schemes in use, and sometimes software vendors even switched between schemes. The most important feature of numbered schemes (as opposed to pure naming schemes like "Windows ME, XP, Vista") is that the version numbers always increase, that is, later versions get... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What can a novel do that film and TV cannot? You've already gotten quite a few good answers, but there's one important point that I didn't see in any of them: You can easily omit visual and aural details. If you don't want to tell the age of the protagonist, or the hair colour, or the type of clothes, or if you don't want to tell it yet, ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Does it make sense to (partially) create a conlang that you don't intend to actually use in the story? The story that I'm currently working on is in a very far future. Clearly, people will speak a different language then. Now, I wondered if it can make sense to (partially) create a conlang for the story even though I don't plan to write anything in that language in the final text. I see two potentia... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
How to write a convincing religious myth? In my story the protagonist hears, in a temple ceremony, the reading of a religious/mythological text. Now in the actual story, I don't need the text itself (the role of the text in context, and the protagonist's reaction to it are the important points), but since I've seen the tag challenge, I thoug... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What should be the ideal length of sentences in a blog post for ease of reading? It depends on your intended audience. If your audience is literature professors, then you can use pretty long and complex sentences, as long as you make sure that they are reasonably well-written. Indeed, those professors probably will get quite annoyed if all your sentences are too short and simple... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to cue in our readers that we are using an uncommon symbolism? One way to do it subtly might be to show the character's reactions to the symbols. For example: > John was about to enter the room when he noticed the tulip painted to the side of the door. He hesitated. Not that he was superstitious, rationally he certainly knew that this was just the image of a ni... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
What is a good way to foreshadow that magic is actually very advanced technology? In a story I'm working on, humanity had sometime in the past reached a very advanced technological level (far higher than ours), but then had a devastating global war, and afterwards technology had been banned. Now at the time of my story, those events are long gone, and have passed into the realms ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Avoiding repetition when there are two unidentified individuals I think you can achieve a lot by just replacing the “was” sentence by making it an attribute in the following sentence, and making use of terms like “the first”, “the former” and “the other”. > The overwhelmingly tall figure stood in the corner of the room. The skinny figure right beside him sat on ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to explain the main plot with science based concepts, without the non-sci-fi fans getting bored? Let me point out a different risk of providing a too detailed description of how the aliens learned about it: The risk of unnecessarily contradicting established science, and thus losing exactly those who would otherwise be most likely to enjoy detailed descriptions. In this particular case, it is c... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Conflict and antagonist in a certain subtype of erotic novels I think it may be a good idea to first look generically to the possible types of conflict, to then look how well they fit to your definition of a purely erotic novel. I think the most important distinction in this respect is between obstacles and decision problems (note that I just made up that term... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Avoiding spectacle creep While there are already many good answers, there's one option which I haven't seen mentioned (if I just missed it, sorry about that): Your hero may discover that the solution to the problem wasn't actually as good as thought. And now he has to fix it. For example, say the world had been held hostag... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to write a convincing character with a opinion that differs from the author's? If the readers think the opinion of your protagonist is your own opinion, then I'd guess the problem is not that the protagonist has that opinion, but that the protagonist's opinion is not or not sufficiently challenged in the story. That is, the book actually seems to promote that protagonist's posi... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to make an email less "me" centric? Maybe it helps if you just change your viewpoint. You probably have written the mail with the viewpoint “I want this job.” Instead, consider the viewpoint ”The company will need to refill that job, and I'm a very good fit.” Think of an advertisement. You'll never find an advertisement that says “We ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
How much indirection is too much? I'm writing a chapter with a lot of indirection, and I'm wondering if I'm doing too much of it. To be specific, it is the main character remembering an event from his youth when a merchant who stayed over night in his home village told stories about what other people told him about their experiences... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Do writers write philosophical essays? I don't think philosophy and fiction are really opposites. The difference is that in fiction, you don't describe the philosophy, you show its consequences. For example, if your philosophy includes the claim that whatever bad you do, will come back to haunt you, then in a philosophical essay you'd ju... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: What are the Pros and Cons of long names? A compromise might be that you have a long and complicated name, but also have a common short abbreviation of that, which normally is used. For example, using your name: > The city had the almost unpronounceable name Exopeildelivurathneyateyafilen, but usually people referred to it just as Exofilen.... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to differentiate narration and thoughts in the first person POV? I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I'll interpret it as distinguishing between thoughts of the first-person narrator as character when the story happened, and the thoughts of the narrator when narrating it. This concept in my opinion only makes sense if the the narrator tells the story in the ... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to make the reader think that the *character's* logic is flawed instead of the author's? Usually the narrator knows about the thoughts. And the narrator will know that the thoughts are illogical, and thus can distance himself/herself from the thoughts. Of course that only works if the narrator isn't the villain in first-person. For example, you might write something like: > Dick th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to demonstrate an evolution of magic without it seeming like it is improvised? It probably depends on the protagonists. Are they themselves magic users? Or even magic researchers? Is there actually a separate magic research (like the science research system in our world), or is magic research something that is done in magic guilds or magic schools that guard their knowledge fro... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: If I'm writing in US English, am I not allowed to use the metric system? Just saw your edit: > However, I'm using it simply just to convey to the reader "the car was going super fast" in a fancier way. In that case, I'd say use neither mph nor km/h. When you see a car going fast, or sitting in a car going fast, you are not making a speed measurement/looking at the speed... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How to make the murder's identity less obvious, or make the obviousness not matter? There are two lines of thought that come to my mind: First, this is a first person narrative, so the narration happens at some time after all that happened. Now, having done such a horrible thing, he might be in a state of self-denial. Also, he's a horror story author, so he's used to imagine horrib... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What is the difference between Tension, Suspense and Mystery? Many good answers already, and I'm certainly not an expert on this, but yet I think I can still add something I haven't yet seen, or at least not recognized, in the other answers: Tension and suspense are emotional, while mystery is intellectual. I'd say tension is the basic reason why you read on.... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How do I handle unintentional occurences of politically hot topics? One idea might be to think of his motivation and judgement. How does he know how to comfort her? Or that comforting her is the right thing in this situation? He must have some source of information of what would be the right thing to do. Normally I'd assume that comes from the social environment he ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Tension built upon whether the main character will commit suicide or not. Problem: I'm using first person narrative I understand the question so that the story continues after the (postponed) death. Usually the reader knows how far into the story he is, so if there's too much story left, the reader will know, or at least expect, in advance that the first-person narrator will not die (unless it's a ghost story, as ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Does the following opening grip you? The first few sentences left me puzzled: > Of all the people who wanted to join the trip, Paola was the the last I expected would come. It surprised me. We barely knew each other at school, and I was pretty sure she wasn't interested in me. So the only reason why someone would join a trip with seve... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Beginners can break rules too? I don't think this is in any way specific to writing. For example in physics, there are many wannabe-Einsteins who think that if you just claim the previous physicists were wrong and dream up your own theory, you can revolutionize physics. The result are crackpot theories, because unlike Einstein, th... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: My Hero is captured, now what? Another possibility that has not yet been mentioned is magic that works differently on humans and goblins. For example, the hero could have worn an amulet that offers some magic protection for humans, but has a very bad effect on any goblin wearing it. Of course the goblins would have stolen that amu... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Is there a complete guideline for which tense to use? Well, the way I understand the tenses is as follows ( warning: this is my personal understanding, which might not be entirely correct, especially since I'm not a native English speaker; if anything is wrong, corrections are welcome): There is a "baseline" tense, past, present or future, which tells ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Alien checking, by making questions One thing they could do is to ask questions about his home worlds with the intention to find inconsistencies that prove he's making things up. That would as a side effect also make the reader familiar with that home world. For example: > "So you are from a far-away planet? So where is this planet?"... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: How to "defy" physics on a sci-fi? A hint where you could actually place the new elements: You could put them in the island of stability. If some people expect half-lifes of millions of years, it's not much of a stretch to also put some stable element there (although a very long half-life may be good enough; after all, uranium is inst... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: First Chapter for Free? If you publish the initial chapter, there's one thing you should make damn sure: That the readers are guaranteed to know up front that they are reading only a part of the story. Nothing puts you down more than if you expect to get the full story, and then detect that it's only a part, and you have to... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Basing fiction on personal life Considering that many of those threads from your life probably also involved other people, another pitfall is that someone else might recognize himself in your book and not like what you write about "him". If he's too recognizable, it might even get you in legal trouble. (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Time measures in fantasy worlds One additional thought: Maybe the way you give time should depend on whether it is done by the narrator or by one of the protagonists. The narrator is telling the story to a present-day reader, so unless the narrator is supposed to be a person of that fantasy world, it would be natural if he tells... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: Iambic pentameter: how do you use words with 'secondary stressed' syllables? I should warn that I'm actually not really qualified to answer this question since I neither know too much about a poetry nor am I even a native English speaker. However I'm answering anyway because I've made an observation which might adequately explain why the first version sounds fine and the seco... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: How to format dialogue with an embedded long monologue One thing I would think about is: Are those things the other person says really unnecessary? They actually might give the reader valuable background information about what the other person already knows, and what that person considers normal (even though the reader may not) or extraordinatry (althoug... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: What do you do if you enjoy writing, but have no ideas? Maybe you could write about the problem of coming up with ideas? Write a story about someone who has troubles coming up with ideas. Think about which solutions he might try, and how those solutions work or don't work. This has two effects: First, you already have one idea for a text, and it's someth... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |
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A: What is the term for an accessible character that knows nothing? TVTropes calls such a character The Watson: > The Watson is the character whose job it is to ask the same questions the audience must be asking and let other characters explain what's going on. I don't know if it is desirable to have such a character (I'll let the more qualified people here answer ... (more) |
— | over 10 years ago |