Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: What innovative techniques can make a textbook for learning a foreign language "pop"? The issue with learning a language is that you need to walk before you can run. You need the simple, repetitive exercises so you can learn the building blocks of the language. In high school French I remember we were listening to some pre-recorded exercise where we were practicing conjugating two... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How I should handle gender-neutral pronouns in technical writing? I will cheerfully use "singular they" if that is a particular person's pronoun, but not as a lazy substitute for "he/she." Rewrite the sentence, either as plural or as second-person. >1) When users request for their visit and order to be registered in their account, a checkin is created at POS... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Proofreading a novel: is it okay to use a question mark with an exclamation mark - "?!" It's totally fine. It expresses a combination of query and astonishment. There was even an attempt to combine the marks into one, called an interrobang, but it never caught on. Using "?!" is neither innovative nor idiosyncratic. (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What are the rules for punctuating a conversation? There are three rules for conversation: 1) Indicate through some mark of punctuation that someone is speaking aloud. This can be double quotes " , single quotes ' , dashes of varying lengths — , guillemets « , or whatever else typographic convention is in your area. 2) Make it clear who is speakin... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Two footnote numbering sequences 1) This kind of formatting may be something which would have to be done manually by the end typesetter/layout person before publication. You would run everything in numerical sequence regardless of the kind of note. Indicate in the body of the footnote which was which (for example, every footnote wou... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Switching languages within dialogue Maybe enclose the words in some other punctuation? Brackets: > "Wow! You [finally listened to] my stinking advice!" Curly Brackets: > "Wow! You {finally listened to} my stinking advice!" Guillemets: > "Wow! You «finally listened to» my stinking advice!" Experiment with colons, asterisks, et al... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: What makes an ending "happy"? The protagonist(s) win/s, the antagonist(s) is/are defeated (even temporarily), and the reader can imagine the protagonists continuing on to other adventures, or with their lives, in some positive way. - I would argue that Endgame is a mixed ending, not a happy one, specifically because not all the ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: How to differentiate between two people with the same name in a story? Any time you get two or more people in a group (or a family) with the same name, they are almost immediately given a nickname or some extra appellation so everyone knows who is being talked about. As an example which I used in a different answer: Take an Italian neighborhood with five friends all n... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is it alright to add scenes that don’t move the plot forwards much but develop relationships/character? You might want to break up the three scenes with something else, but generally speaking, yes, it's okay to focus on character development even if there isn't a ton of plot movement. Maybe add in a short scene which advances the antagonist's part of the plot arc? Readers do want to root for your char... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Doubt about the difference between a "Beat" and a "Event" I have never heard of McKee's definition of "beat." I have only heard of and use the filmmaking definition. I have always viewed Event as part of your overall plot structure, and Beat as a granular part of how you construct a smaller Scene within a chapter. Events are high and low points in your plo... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Point of View Confusion If you move out of the child's POV, make it really obvious. - Move that scene to its own chapter. Call it "Interlude" or something. Have the non-child POV scene be the only scene in the chapter. - If your book has Parts which are labeled, have this non-child POV scene only at the beginning of a Par... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Avoiding racist tropes in fantasy Humans don't all look the same, dress the same, speak the same language. Why should $FANTASYRACE? So you have Legolas elves. You should also have Rhea Perlman elves. You should have Lupita Nyong'o elves. Benedict Wong elves. Peter Dinklage elves. Your dwarves can look like Gimli and Thorin, and they... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Shifting tenses in the middle of narration Yes, you're totally fine. If your tense shift happens between paragraphs — that is, the new tense starts a new paragraph — it should be clear what's happening. If this is a first-person narrative and you as the writer have shown that this is the narrator addressing someone, there's no reason you... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Help, I cannot decide when to start the story When asked some variant of "Where do I start?" my mom likes to joke "Start at the beginning, go all the way through the middle, and when you get to the end, stop." In this case, that might make sense. Start at the beginning of your story, not at the beginning of your universe. What's the tale you w... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Is it uncompelling to continue the story with lower stakes? In Game of Thrones there were two sets of stakes: the magical Night King, and the mundane power struggle for the Iron Throne. The characters reasonably decided they had to deal with the magical, more immediately existential threat before handling the mundane one. Honestly I agree with you, and I als... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
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A: Good ways to sort "rambly" notes? Use Scrivener. My answer here is heavily adapted from my answer to a different question, but I think it will be helpful to you: Scrivener is a tremendously flexible writing program. You can create innumberable documents, nest them, link them, put them in folders, look at a split screen of two at on... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How to not confuse readers with simultaneous events? If your goal is hectic momentum, then two-sentence paragraphs with a visual indicator of "scene change" might work. > Colonel Mustard frantically wiped up the table. No one would believe he hadn't done it. > > Miss Scarlett straightened her dress, patted her hair, and checked her makeup in... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: How important is it for multiple POVs to run chronologically? I can think of a TV example where the timelines are not synchronous and it was a big part of the surprise at the end of S1. On Westworld, you have human-identical androids (called "hosts") who are not sentient. The androids' attempts to become sentient is part of the season's arc. One host, Dolores,... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: What can a novel do that film and TV cannot? I think the main advantage is interior life. You can use narration or thoughts to give us what one character is (or several are) thinking. That's hard to do visually without a cabbagehead character or "As you know"ing, which I hate. (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Where is the line between a tough love character and a pure asshole? Look at her motives. "Tough love" is someone making hard calls or asking difficult things for the right reasons. A parent making you get up at 6:00 a.m. to go to school no matter how tired you are, or insisting that you do all your chores before going out, because it teaches you responsibility. A dr... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: POV - 3rd Person Rules and Exceptions? You cannot randomly change POV in the middle of a paragraph just to get in that one critical snipe at your main character. You can have a scene break (usually two returns, to create white space) and move to the POV of other characters, like the men in the truck or two other characters discussing you... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Is it bad writing or bad story telling if first person narrative contains more information than the narrator knows? > (A) In a humourous short story about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Bertie is talking about a situation involving two strangers and Jeeves suggests referring to them as A & B. When another stranger enters that situation, Jeeves suggests "We will call him C, sir" and Bertie says, "Caesar is a good name"... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
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A: Can you use a semicolon to connect fragments that are one item in a vertical list? I would be fine with either a comma or a semi-colon, although I think I'd prefer the semi-colon. Lists, particularly with sentence fragments, are pretty flexible in terms of content and punctuation. Just be consistent. (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: The difference between dialogue marks I think this is dependent on the convention in the country or location where you are publishing. In the U.S., it's double quotes, but in Britain, it's often single quotes. I believe France and Italy use guillemets. I've seen the dashes but I don't recall where they are used. The upshot is that, as J... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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Punctuating text messages with speaker tags in running copy Punctuation (and spelling and capitalization) in text messages is different from punctuation in other forms of written communication (emails, memos, standard prose). In particular, punctuation, or sometimes the lack of it, in text messaging adds layers of meaning. Texts can be close to a live transc... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Avoiding the "not like other girls" trope? "Strong and independent" does not have to mean "behaves in a masculine way." - Strong can simply be "has healthy self-esteem and doesn't rely on third parties for her self-image." - Independent can similarly be "doesn't require a romantic relationship and/or partner to be happy" (even if she has one... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Help! My Character is too much for her story! If your givens aren't working, change your givens. If Vampirella McExplosia is dominating every scene she's in, then she's too big for this story. Save this draft (so you aren't putting a stake in her, just moving her) and rewrite your story entirely with someone else as Roommate #4. You will have ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to write a chaotic neutral protagonist and prevent my readers from thinking they are evil? I found a very elegant reduction of alignments in a Tumblr post: > I figured out a simple guide to the alignment chart last night: > > Lawful: Rules matter more to me than individuals. > Chaotic: Individuals matter more to me than rules. > > Good: Other people’s well-bein... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Should beta-readers have genre experience? Both are useful. Someone who is genre-savvy will already know the rhythms and tropes of the genre, and can advise you about extra things to add, or say "This theme has fallen out of favor in the last two years," or point out "So-and-so did this already, so don't borrow too heavily." Someone who is ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Third wheel character 1) Why doesn't Mr. Id have a POV scene until later in the story? It's your story. Give him an arc. 2) Instead of Porthos, Aramis, and Athos, think of Kirk (ego), Spock (superego), and McCoy (Id). While Kirk and Spock spend more time together on the bridge, the three are always thought of as "the Big... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How do I avoid the "chosen hero" feeling? Add other characters who also fit all the "not replaceable" chosen-one requirements. You could have several heirs, a highly trained merc squad, a prophecy which covers all first-born daughters conceived under a sickle moon, etc. It happens that your MC is the person who's available to do the job, bu... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How to keep romance out of my novel? Don't write it in. What readers do in their own fan responses is on them, not on you, and you can't prevent people from shipping anyone they like. But if you don't want canonical romance, just... don't put it in. Make sure your narrative voice doesn't talk about Kem in a way which could be interpre... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Is writing three drafts really necessary? The point of "subsequent drafts" is that for 99% of writers, the first draft is weak. That's completely fine. The purpose of the first draft is to get the damn thing on paper. You can't edit an empty page. Subsequent drafts are for fixing weak spots: in plot, timeline, character, worldbuilding, cred... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: How soon is too soon for a redemption arc? Monica's excellent answer provides you with the how, but I'd like to touch on when, since you asked "how soon is too soon?" The rough answer is "It's too soon if the villain hasn't earned it." Your villain has to walk all the way back through the brainwashing/teaching/propaganda etc. which got the ... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Storing WorldBuilding Information I think it depends on how you're going to access it — that is, what you will need it for. - Is your story a huge era-spanning saga? You may want to list things chronologically. - Is your story heavily reliant on dynasties, reigns of monarchs, or political administrations? Group them by leader. - Doe... (more) |
— | about 5 years ago |
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A: Confused about when to treat something as a dialogue tag A sentence can indicate who is speaking without being attached by a comma. > “Yes, but I mean no.” Steve stumbles over his words. “Not the come home part.” In this instance, Steve stumbles over his words. is a complete sentence which interrupts the dialogue, which consists of two complete sentences... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Planning story using layers, compartmentalization, and time You might find Scrivener to be useful. Scrivener is a writing program which allows you a lot of control: organization, nesting files inside folders inside folders, tags, summaries, highlights, links, snapshots of individual bits of writing, and so on. If you want to be able to recreate a lost projec... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Varying POV and tense It's a bit dicey. You'd have to have a good reason for it. - If Preston's POV is in the present, but Paola's POV is in the past, is the story happening in Preston's time? Is Paola relating things in flashback? - Is Preston an alien or someone who experiences time in a non-linear fashion, as compared... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Needing Help Fleshing Out Male Character So He's Not Just a Stock Character Give him his own arc. (I am amused that the gender here is the reverse of what's been a problem for a long time, but the advice applies to any character of any gender.) In the 2017 Wonder Woman film, Steve Trevor is Diana's love interest, but he has his own arc. His job is to be a spy: To spy on th... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Writing a Non Fiction: Need to Format a Continuous Side Bar You're working in the wrong programs. I haven't used LibreOffice, but Word is a word processing program. It's not a layout program. Write your stories in Word or whatever. Write them in two separate documents and use whatever manual note system you prefer to indicate where content has to align. (Wo... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Does this scene fail the Bechdel test? The Bechdel Test has three rules: 1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it 2. Who talk to each other 3. About something besides a man Some people who try to apply it use "man" in the romantic sense, but it doesn't have to be. So if your scene has the two women as named characters talking... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: How long can a fantasy novel stay in metaphorical Kansas? The purpose of the Kansas section is to establish the Real World before embarking on the Quest (to use the terms from the Hero's Journey). The Real World is the place which the Hero (gender/age/number neutral) must leave behind. You can use it to establish character traits, and the Quest could poten... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: When can I kill my character? When it serves the plot. That's really the only reason you do anything in a plot-driven story. If the death serves the plot, do it. If it doesn't serve the plot, then don't. Don't do it for shock value, or purely to motivate another character (that's called "fridging," which you can read about on T... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to make a repeating plot "slice" not annoying I am a fan of questioning your givens. You don't want to kill anyone? Fine. But what plot point is served by having your characters physically injured? - Does it remove them from the action? Have someone miss a bus/train/plane, oversleep, trapped in a stuck elevator. - Does it make them vulnerable? ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Characters that take on a life of their own Change one of your givens. Either change the plot to fit the character or change the character to fit the plot. It depends on which one is more important to you. (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to make the villain relatable/human without making the hero seem like a monster for killing him? Just because you can understand how the villain got that way doesn't mean you have to agree with the villain's actions. Most people can understand how Black Panther's Erik Killmonger turned out the way he did. (More of that discussion in my answer to this question.) That doesn't mean that the viewer... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How to make a funny and egotistical character that doesn't annoy the audience Watch Thor: Ragnarok and pay attention to Jeff Goldbum's Grandmaster. I think he's the kind of archetype you're looking for. You want someone who is not actively malicious, but so self-involved as to be capable of hurting others purely because he doesn't recognize that it's painful. If it amuses him,... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Hate to love, love to hate To create a plot, you have to ask three questions of your protagonist: 1. What does the protagonist want? 2. What is stopping the person from getting it? 3. What will the person to do achieve his/her goal? If you know what your protagonist wants, then your antagonist should be the obstacle to getti... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: A question about Past Participle vs Simple Past in a novel It's been mentioned on this board before, but rules which arbitrarily declare any part of a language off-limits are ridiculous. They may be meant to give guardrails to new writers, but all they end up doing is making people frantic that they are Breaking A Rule. So ignore that idea. In this inst... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |
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A: How to prevent seeming like a Marty Stu-ish villain is cheating? First off, the easiest way to have your bad guy be less invincible and more defeatable is to make him less invincible. He's your creation. Don't give him so many benefits. Take away some of the physical stuff. He doesn't have to be such an amazing fighter (he can just be an average fighter, or not on... (more) |
— | about 6 years ago |