Activity for Liquid
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | — |
What is the most important characteristic of New Weird as a genre? Recently I've stumbled across China Miéville's novels. Apparently, they fit in a genre called Weird Fiction , or to be even more specific New Weird , where the "new" is used to distinguish new writers from literary sources as Lovecraft. Yet, in my opinion, a book like Perdido Street Station could be... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to detach yourself from a character you're going to kill? You don't. To put it in more words: the audience has to get attached to make the death relevant. You want her death to be a wake-up call, a touch of realism and a reminder of what war is. Sure, there is no guarantee that your audience will like the same characters that you like. But if you realize ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do you deal with an abrupt change in personality for a protagonist? There is a bunch of creative methods - some more than other - that can help you. Here are my ideas: Change the narration style One of the most clear ways to signal that something has changed is making changes to the narrator. It's a pretty solid and, well, obvious advice if you have a first perso... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How is character development a major role in the plot of a story The main distinction to be made here is between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories. Character-driven stories, as you can imagine, focus mainly on the characters, their struggles, their growth and their relationships. The central questions of these stories could be, What will Bob do in ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Can monster/beasts be in a psychological horror It's a difficult setting, but it could be done. The point of psychological horror is showing emotional disturbances, psychologic disorders, and provoking a certain feeling of anxiety in the readers. Monsters can be there, but they can't be your focus, or they must be clearly simbolic in nature. For... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Am I a new writer? It's about marketing. From a purely logical standpoint, you are already a published author, since you did publish a book and you did sell some copies, no matter how few. So, in theory you have your answer. Yet, some publishing companies may look down on you. Self-publishing has not a great reputati... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Character had a different name in the past. Which name should I use in a flashback? Depending on how you want to play that, both ways are viable. You could explicity tell that the character hadn't a name then : > Ai remembered when the fire nation attacked. Of course, she hadn't the luxury of having a name back then. Living as a scrawny little street-urchin, there were very few peo... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Should the audience be immediately aware of the reason for a flashback? I'd argue that most flashbacks make sense only later in a story, exspecially in visual media, so yes, it is an accepted technique. A lot of times a flashback is used as a for of foreshadowing: it is somewhat implied that what is being showed will make sense at a later time. You can still run into tr... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
How can you make up a convincing dialect? I often need to introduce one, if not several, made up dialects. We're talking about fictional worldbuilding: so any real world dialect is ruled out. They can be used as a source of inspiration, but they can't be straight up applied. Creating a dialect from scratch is easier than making a completely... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Can one start the second draft when the first lacks a proper ending? I'm close to ending my first draft, literally being to the last or second-to-last chapter. I'm suffering from a strange form of writer's block, though, since I can't seem to come up with a satisfying ending scene. I know what has to happen plot-wise, I just have trouble put it into a compelling chapt... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How do you cope with rejection? I'll give my two cents, as someone who feels the same struggles. You'll never get completely over the fear of rejection, or of not being good enough. I say this because even accomplished authors reported the same fear. Brandon Sanderson said, in an episode of the podcast Writing Excuses, something a... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Copyright related issue on publishing a technical book? You don't own the copyright from anything that you've taken as "references from many sources." You'll need to check under what kind of copyright those sources are. You'll need copyright clearance and/or source attribution (eg, if those materials are under a Creative Commons licence). (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: POV - 3rd Person Rules and Exceptions? Your first example is not a straight-forward, out of the book example of breaking a POV. Your character may as well suspect that other people have a bad opinion on him. He might have overheard something, he might have deducted it from how people behave around him. Of course, if it's an important plo... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to write Arabic in dialogue for an English piece? I'd use the phonetic spelling, unless you're planning to publish in a country where both Arabic and English are commonplace. The reason is that it's easier for someone used to the latin alphabeth, like english readers, to read and recognize very unfamiliar words such "alaistirkha". Your audience won... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
What are some good historical sources for writing medieval battles? This question popped into my mind after criticizing the strategic choices in a recent episode of a famous fantasy television show (coffs). A lot of genre fiction (mostly fantasy, even if we may cast historical-fiction into the pot) deals with battles, war and similar events. However, the emotional i... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Having multiple epilogues According to Wikipedia, > An epilogue is the final chapter at the end of a story that often serves to reveal the fates of the characters. Some epilogues may feature scenes only tangentially related to the subject of the story. They can be used to hint at a sequel or wrap up all the loose ends. They ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
When do you stop "pushing" a book? Let's suppose you have finished your novel, through all the appropriate stages of drafting and editing needed. You begin submitting the book to various agents and/or publishing companies, but none of your queries gets answers. I'm talking about a worst-case scenario, where you either get copypasted ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
In a series of books, what happens after the coming of age? I'm writing a novel focusing on a single character POV. For many aspects, it can be considered a coming of age story; along with the usual tropes of the hero's journey, my protagonist gradually learn something of the world she lives in, acquires more confidence, agency, and the respect of her peers. ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
The unknown and unexplained in science fiction Science fiction has been defined as a genre where the "incredible" elements are "recognizable as not-true, but also as not-unlike-true, not-flatly- (and in the current state of knowledge) impossible" (According to Darko Suvin, from Wikipedia link). This is often compared against fantasy, where magic... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Picking a theme as a discovery writer > However, if I just pick a random arbitrary theme by spinning the great wheel of themes, then I find myself struggling to develop it because there is nothing behind it. Then I fizzle out and abandon the project. In my experience (another discovery writer reporting in) the themes don't move the plot... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing technique resources I'll add to the already good answers: > effective ways to describe fear, doubt, exhaustion, love... There are a lot of writing guides out there, some more general, some more specific. Some bad, some good. I'll tell you about my experience with a book called "the Emotion-Thesaurus" that a friend gif... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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English words in a non-english sci-fi novel In the modern world, english is a well-estabilished technical and scientific language. Some terms have become so commonly used that they are accepted in my native tongue (words like "computer", "PC", "network" being examples). I'm currently writing a science fiction novel in my native language. I de... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Can I include diagrams in essays for complex topics? I think that in this case you may want to keep both ways open. Diagrams are usually allright in academic and technical contexts, but you mentioned this is a college assessment and your ability to write clearly is going to be graded. I would include the image for clarity, while describing the conten... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
The difference between dialogue marks Most authors use dialogue in writing, especially when writing fiction. Now, if I remember my first grade primary school correctly, dialogue can be directly separated from narration in a number of ways. Either quotation marks, > "Murder," she said. dashes, > -Murder,- she said. or angle brackets ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Fleshing out the character motivation from the plot I never used the snowflake method myself, even if I gave it a look sometime ago. The problem with your abstract and concrete goals is that one is the specialization of the other. After all "killing X because it did Y" is just a particular instance of "vengeance". So they are basically the same goal.... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Can a third-person narrator ask questions instead of the characters? In novels, when the PoV follows a particular character, is pretty common that we get to hear his/her thoughts. Sometimes, those thoughts take the form of questions that the character ask himself: > What does that mean? Jodie pondered. Of course another way to do this is to cut the internal dialogue... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Chapters of a Book and Story Structure of McKee As far as I remember about story structure and McKee, and as far as a quick search on google yielded, No. Acts are larger than chapters, in most books of medium lenght. Acts are actually a concept more closely related to theater plays and screenwriting, but still it can be applied to novel and to s... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Beyond letters and diaries—exercises to explore characters' personalities and motivation > I feel as though I'm out of options for exploring these characters in a more intimate fashion. It's not feasible to me that any of them would keep a diary or write letters. I don't want to write a train-of-thought for any of them as an exercise; because, that's essentially what the main body of wor... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Delivering sarcasm Sarcasm is tricky. You correctly state that the written word is a poor medium for sarcasm (and surely you can't put your retorts betwen tags, unless if you hope to become a meme on some obscure internet imageboard). Yet I'd argue that context can help you make clear sarcastic remarks, even when you ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: What makes a siege story/plot interesting? You have a lot to talk about, in theory. A city under siege could last for months, sometimes a year, without reinforcements (by the way, wikipedia has a nice list of sieges here, both real and fictional). So, sieges are relatively slow and can have relatively low action (compared to field battles). ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Is a stroke of luck acceptable after a series of unfavorable events? The protagonist sets out on a journey to reach a goal. But the further he gets into the story, the clearer he understands that the odds aren't in his favor. He experiences loss, frustration, anger, fatigue. He falls, rises again, and falls once more. When he seems to be running out of option, thought... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Future battlegrounds The horse is not dead yet. Consider tanks. They are a century old technology, so they've been around for a while. Yet they did not kick foot soldiers from the battlefields. There are tasks that tanks are incapable of doing, there are requirements that make the use of tanks unfeasible in certain situ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Will it be accepted, if there is no ''Main Character" stereotype? Adding to linksassin's good answer about having a cast of characters rather than a main, I want to point out what you said: > The author takes special care of them. Provides them wise thinking. Good luck. A charm. In some cases special powers too. Sometimes readers bind that character to themselves,... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Characterizing a sentient robot: inhuman PoV Following the previous question: - Characterizing a sentient robot: sensory data I'm writing a robot character with a particular PoV. In the previous question I wanted to talk about sensory data; here I would like to open a wider topic. I know that this risks going into opinion-based territory, bu... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Characterizing a sentient robot: sensory data I have a sentient robot in my novel. Truth to be told, I have many. Sentience is somewhat cheap to achieve, meaning that there are multiple artificial beings that can be considered sentient by our standards. I'm already making some differences and showing how he perceives the world through his set o... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
The three acts and their relative length Let's take for granted that the 3 acts structure is relevant and exists. This, of course, is an assumption. How the three acts relate with the length of the novel? In a standard book - let's say 50k words, by rule of thumb the first act should be somewhat less that one third, with the second and the... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Using substitution ciphers to generate new alphabets in a novel A substitution cipher is a method used in cryptography to encrypt the meaning of a text. In the most common form, a substitution cipher changes every letter in the target text with another, making it impossible to read without first decrypting it. For example, this sentence in bold is encrypted with... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Introducing a character in the third act? I'm well into the third act of my novel and I'm introducing a new character that will play a part in the ending and an even bigger part in the roughly sketched sequel I have in mind. Now, I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that you shouldn't introduce new characters so late, unless not if you haven... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Can disgust be a key component of horror? The feeling of disgust is often used in horrors, exspecially visual medias (where is arguably easier to shock the audience with great effect). Often horror stories revolve around one scary element (a villain; a monster; a disease) that carries along a lot of repulsive traits. The alien in Alien is s... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Are friendly writing contests a useful exercise? Yes, I know that - in theory - any exercise is a good exercise. Context : Lately I've been running a writing group were multiple creative-writing/reading enthusiasts meet. As a group activity, we've been issuing a number of writing contest. Writers are asked to write about a particular theme or foll... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
When is using a simile better than giving a literal description? > Definition of simile > > : a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses) Similes are nice tools that every narrator has (even if I'd like to focus on creative-writing for this question). Yet, similes are far from being fail proof. ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
How can I write humor as character trait? I have a character that likes to make humor, puns and jokes. Humor should work here as a character trait; something really peculiar to this particular char. He says a lot of puns because he find them amusing on an intellectual level. Some people like riddles, some like puzzle games, and some others ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Does the reader need to like the PoV character? I have the feeling this is already been asked, but I can't seem to find it. Close the question if it comes out as duplicate. There's an issue with novels with a first-person narrator, or a third person limited narrator that doesn't switch point of view. Namely, the reader is stuck for all the novel ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
Personal or impersonal in a technical resume In CVs or on Linkedin profiles there are often spaces dedicated to past experience. In those sections, one is supposed to describe what work he/she did and what skills he/she acquired on previous workplaces/projects. In this context, is it better to describe the experience in a personal or imperson... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Do I need to convey a moral for each of my blog posts? You can try to add a "what I learned" sentence to the end of your blog posts, when there is something interesting to say, if your aim is to give "morals" to the readers. But overall, no: you don't need to convey a moral. Clearly stated morals are actually fine for a small subset of written media (e... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
How to include external references when writing internal documentation? In the IT industry, we often write a lot of technical documentation meant for internal use only. Those documents are often stored in an internal wiki and accessed when the need arises. The content of the documents is not relevant here; the only relevant fact is that in the IT field you are not suppo... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Question | — |
What should tie a collection of short-stories together? Short-stories are a nice format to write. If you have been an aspiring writer for at least one year, it's quite probabile that you've got at least three short stories drafted out, sitting in some drawer or some hidden folder on your computer. Let's imagine now that you want to publish those stories,... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How to shorten a prologue? I'm going to make two points: Don't be afraid to be more concise in your writing: There is a common misconception between us writers that we could sum up as: the audience is kind of dumb, and I need to spell things out for them (I'm exaggerating on purpose, but bear with me). This is, of course, a ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Naming Characters after Friends/Family From a literary standpoint, having to change a character name is kind of an hard choice to make. Names, rare or common as they may be, tend to stick to the character. You have gotten used to "Bob Snow", any other thing will seem downright strange. > As testimonied by Taserface in Guardians of the G... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Quote with attribution, but without saying that I'm quoting Assuming it's an academic paper, it's perfectly fine to just add the number to the quote. The number will redirect the reader to the full source, presumably at the bottom of your page or in your bibliography section. You already "introduced" the author in the previous citation, no need to do it twic... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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