Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How to write from the middle? Depending on what kind of writer you are, you might benefit from creating an outline, and trying to hang your cool scenes on that. Writing scenes which aren't connected to anything can be fun, and one of the reasons is that you aren't burdened by making it fit into a larger narrative. You haven't re... (more) |
— | about 11 years ago |
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A: Punctuation and capitalisation in poetry If you're writing a poem, you are allowed to throw pretty much all the rules out the window. You can eschew just punctuation, just capitalization, both, split the difference per stanza or per line, whatever works to convey your meaning. If it's significant to you as the poet that the city name shoul... (more) |
— | about 11 years ago |
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A: How do I cite well known historical works? Why would citing "a well-known historical source" be any different from citing a not-particularly-well-known historical source? For the speech: you found the speech somewhere, right? Book, website, magazine? Cite that source. For the U.S. Constitution, a quick Google of "rules for citing US constit... (more) |
— | about 11 years ago |
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A: Flashback or dream as a means of hinting at more going on than meets the eye You have two things going on: a flashback from the main narrative, and a dream. If the dream is taking place in the past, that may be a literal flashing-back, but it's not actually a flashback. A flashback is reliable (in the sense of "reliable narrator"), realistic, and a memory of someone. It's a ... (more) |
— | about 11 years ago |
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A: Proper use of the "historical present tense" Try this: > San Francisco is just coming to life. I can see all of downtown from my hotel room. Ten stories below, the traffic is backed up on Powell Street. ... etc. ... etc. > > Two weeks earlier > I am sitting in a bar in New Orleans. The bartender asks me etc. etc. The italics on their own l... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What makes good writing software? As silly as this may sound: the ability to turn every single function OFF if desired. Bells and whistles are great. Some people love them. I hate a lot of them, although not always. Sometimes I want my word processor to catch my CApitalization typos and repeated words. Sometimes I don't. I don't wa... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How to have a character be nameless for the first few paragraphs of a book? You have a few things going on here: 1) If the story is first-person, your problem is solved. We rarely address ourselves by our given names in internal monologues. 2) If your story is in third person, then you have a cultural issue. The children may not get official Names (Starfall, Willow, Runs ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Tracing dependencies and emergent plotholes during edits I'd use a spreadsheet as a wireframe. If you don't have such notes already, you may have to examine your story a section at a time, and make notes about each part detailing what's going on with Plot A. Then use the spreadsheet to make notes about weaving in Plot B. The advantage of the spreadsheet ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Putting a dialogue a tag before a quote Yes to both. Repetitive sentence structure grates on the ear. Also, sometimes it helps to clarify the speaker before the dialogue, and sometimes you actually want action or a pause to occur before the speech, but not separate from it. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Should paragraphs split over pages in thesis? Don't be afraid of white space. It's easier for comprehension not to break a paragraph or sentence mid-thought. I would rather have a big chunk of white space at the bottom of a page and then see the table at the top of the next page, where it made sense in the flow of reading, than have to interrupt... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Should dull dialogue be removed completely? If it's important to character or plot, liven it up a bit. Dress it with stage business. Add some thoughts or descriptions of the setting. I don't find it particularly dull in context. Not every conversation has to have fireworks going off. Sometimes you just have a quiet moment between two people. ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: It is a sign of bad writing to have many scenes that are disconnected with the main plot? Along with nodding vigorously at everything Neil said... You can have discontinuity in the beginning, but at some point it has to be apparent to the reader how these threads are connected. In GRRMartin's Song of Ice and Fire series, the main action takes place on the continent of Westeros. Dany Tar... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Should I close this quoted paragraph? You have broken and punctuated it correctly. But if you're worried about the she continued, then change it up a little: > "Well," Antimony began, taking a deep, thoughtful breath, and stepping a little closer. "If you fill the 5 pound sack, and then empty it into a 3 pound sack, you'll have 2 pounds... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Writing about a subject on which you have no expertise? For a first draft, you can use placeholders. XXX, TK (publication shorthand for "to come"), TECH, literally the word [placeholder] in square brackets — anything to indicate that you'll fill in the mathguffin details later. Also, feel free to gloss or summarize. The point of the scene is not going to ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What software do you use for writing and then structuring a book? You found Scrivener clunky.... ::swoons:: ::recovers:: You might want to try Adobe InDesign, which will allow you to export directly to epub and PDF, at least. Very easy to lay out, edit, and expand. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How to quote from a foreign journal that has not been translated? I think if you indicated somewhere (preface, end notes, first footnote) that the translations are all yours, you could either write the Arabic and then your translation, or write it in English (or whatever language) and footnote it and have the referent be the original Arabic with the citation inform... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Suggest any good text editor for Mac for writing in multiple languages You might try Scrivener. I can't find anything in the documentation about those languages specifically, but it doesn't rule them out either. Free to try for a month, so you've got nothing to lose. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How do authors gain strong familiarity with archaic and extremely rare words? Read a lot of archaic and extremely rare books, take notes, and make a point of using your list as a thesaurus. Practice using your list by writing paragraphs or stories as exercises just to get used to where the words fit. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How to tell a story with the least amount of writing? Maybe you shouldn't be writing. - Maybe you should be collaborating. Sketch the thing out and hire a partner, or a ghostwriter. - Short stories. Fewer words, and less need to create a world. You only need to create as much as is necessary to make the story hold up. - Tell stories out loud instead. ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What is the difference between "creative writing" and "fiction writing"? In addition to Zayne's answer, Creative might cover poetry, essays, or non-fiction, while Fiction is specifically fictional narratives (short stories or novels). (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Gadgets that make the world/story broken Superpowers which aren't fueled by anything and have no consequence for using them. The example which springs to mind is "Heroes." When indestructible cheerleader Claire regenerated, or speedster Daphne ran, they were burning energy. That energy had to come from somewhere. They should have been eati... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Should I embrace or avoid memes(pictures) when blogging? In addition to S.F.'s excellent answer, "Less is more." The post you linked to could have one of those meme photos, but not all three. Having said that, using one of the meme photos does liven it up a bit and make it less dry. So they are not a bad thing by definition, but they are easy to overdo. U... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Resource for generic plot hooks? 1) Character drives plot. Go back to your character sheets, or cook up a few secondaries, and see what their backstories tell you. I've seen J. Michael Straczynski credited with: > Conflict is made up of three things: What does your character want? What will they do to get it? What will someone do... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How to keep the reader engaged in a novel where "not much happens"? "Something happening" doesn't have to be earth-shaking. If the character wakes up, something "happened." It's been a long time since I read it, but in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, about a prisoner in a gulag, nothing much "happens." He doesn't escape or get sprung from prison. He doesn't ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Must every piece of speech get its own paragraph? I am in the middle of editing a book where I'm adding this technique, so I endorse it whole-heartedly. :) My two rules are: 1. Don't confuse the reader. Make sure that no matter what, it's clear who is speaking. This applies to narration, dialogue tags, action tags, and lack thereof of all of them. ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Very long sentences: personal style or just bad writing? I'd have to see these excerpts in context of her thoughts in other situations, but I think if you're doing it deliberately to mimic her feelings and thoughts, it's fine. It feels like nervous-energy stream-of-consciousness, and if that's what you're aiming for, you have it down nicely. If you're try... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Researching sensitive subjects If you want to write from a child's perspective, I suggest spending time with actual children. If you don't have any or aren't related to any, then you'll have to find some. You might try volunteering at (in the U.S.) a YMCA, or getting a job as a camp counselor. Just remember that if you're getting... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: avoiding making all your characters sound the same Spend more time with your character outside the book. - Have you ever seen those email questionnaires which go around occasionally? What's your favorite toothpaste, Coke or Pepsi, Beatles or Stones, ever been to Africa, what's under your bed, etc.? Get one of those, blank it out, and answer it from ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad idea to vary the voice of the narrator in third person (limited omniscient)? No, I love it. I think it's great. The narrator is sort of echoing the perspective of the the person being observed, and you're absolutely right that the two characters see things differently and speak differently. Having a different narrative "voice" for the two of them is a subtle way of showing th... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Combatting Excessive Familiarity Of Writing Don't re-read your work immediately. Just write. Keep yourself on track with your outline (you have an outline of some kind, right? Even if you're a pantser, you have some idea of where the story is going) and don't look over what you did for however long you need to lose familiarity with it. If yo... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: What does a typical creative writing course look like? What tylerharms describes is similar to my experiences at an undergrad level at a fairly large college. There were 10 to 12 people in the class. We received an assignment (Write a short play, or Write an essay about something personal) and had to turn it in by a specific deadline. The deadlines were... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad practice to occasionally add first-person narrative to third-person narrative? The italics indicate that the words are the person's thoughts, so it's almost the same as speech. It's entirely fine. I agree with Joel, however, in reminding you not to overdo it (or any given technique). (On an entirely separate note, why is she walking down an escalator? Escalators move. Is it br... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Switching from past to present tense? That actually might be really interesting. Particularly if you label the flashbacks as "1958" or "Forty years ago," and then the present is "now" or "Present day." And if your flashbacks get closer together (one year ago, six months ago, four months ago, six weeks ago, three weeks ago, one week ago, ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Correct word for "Pulling some one into work, with continuous effort"? 1) I rather like "herding the cats." The idea is that cats are very independent and don't take well to being told what to do, and will scatter and go their own way if forced. You can herd cattle, sheep, or horses because they are group animals which naturally follow a leader and respond to goading fr... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Text Editors. Suggesting & Tracking Changes to Plain-Text Documents I've never used Notepad, but can it create PDFs? Or at least print to PDF? Because Acrobat Pro has a dandy set of markup tools which I use all the time for proofreading emails: - Highlights - Sticky notes - Callouts (with arrows, lines, squares, circles, clouds, text cross-outs, polygon) - I think ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Creative Commons and / or Public Domain library Do you mean something like Project Gutenberg? You should read the legalese for copyright issues, though. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A cross-[What] kind of romance? In the scientific taxonomy of Living Things, you have: - Life - Domain - Kingdom - Phylum - Class etc. down to Species, and maybe thence to Breed. If I were talking about my neighbor's dog who is half Chihuahua and half German Shepherd (no she is, really), I would say her parents had a "cross-bree... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Peeking through character's mask What you need to do is show your introvert to the reader when no other characters are looking, or when he's with people he's close to in some sense. Does your introvert cry when he goes home from his job? Write in his journal or a private blog? Kick himself for not speaking up about something? What ... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Characters with no names I found that when I was reading a collection of Grimm's fairytales — just translated, not the bowdlerized Disney versions — a whole bunch of them have nameless characters. The King, The Queen, The Prince; the baker's daughter, the tailor's apprentice. Puss in Boots is the only character with a name i... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Finding before/after examples where writing has been improved, to learn from If you go through the twelve slush books which Christopher Tolkien assembled from his father's writings (collectively called The History of Middle-Earth), you can see practically line-for-line how JRRTolkien created, edited, and shaped the LOTR trilogy. There are multiple drafts, stories which hopsc... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Are music lyrics copyrighted? While I am not a lawyer, if you purchase a physical CD (bit of a rarity these days, I know) and look at the booklet which has the liner notes, you should see copyright notices for each song. If lyrics have been provided, the notice will be at the end of each set of lyrics. (KISS used to copyright the... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Non-cheap ways to make villains evil? A villain you want to take down is, at his/her core, someone who does not care about the suffering of others. - An evil wizard who wants to murder every witch or wizard who isn't a "pureblood," regardless of how skilled or what the person has done. - A plutocrat who became rich by destroying busines... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Converting Word pages to book pages, for novels? I cheated once: I pulled a book off my shelf and recreated it (in InDesign, but you might be able to do it in Word). Page size, margins (I used a ruler), font, type size, everything. Once I recreated what was on the page, I had a gauge for size. Then I dumped my current work into that, and I had a ro... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How can I help a writing-phobic but competent student develop their writing? I had a friend who was a substitute elementary teacher who had a similar problem. Granted, he was working with a fourth-grader, but essentially, he sat down with her and line by line they created the paragraph together. He suggested something, she suggested something, etc. At the end, she kept insis... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Is it good style in fiction to write sentences as a flow of (disjointed) thoughts? "Is it okay..." and "Can I..." are subjective. It's about context. Are the sentences grammatically correct? Strictly speaking, no. But you are clearly writing in a first-person, casual, stream-of-consciousness dictation style, so they are perfectly fine for that. Speaking as an editor, as long as t... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How many errors should I expect from a proofreader? Ten out of 66,000 words would be acceptable to me, particularly if the proofreader has only gone through it once. You always catch more on the second round because on the first you're reading for both structure and sense, and the second time is primarily for structure. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How does one write a character smarter than oneself? Find people smarter than you to help you. As an example, Susan Elia MacNeal, the author of the Maggie Hope mysteries, didn't know anything about code-breaking when she started writing books about an American mathematician who ends up in WWII London and becomes a British spy. But she did have lots of... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Is the statement readable I concur with Dale; this is so disjointed as to be incoherent. The paragraph needs some context and your sentences need to be simpler and more straightforward. (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: Using abbreviations after in-text citations Knowing nothing about this particular style, my impulse would be to define it on first reference in each kind of copy, and use the abbreviation after that. So the first time you use it in running copy, spell it out and put the abbreviation after it in parens, and then use the abbreviation thereafter... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |
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A: How to continue someone else's story gracefully, with fan-fiction? I read recently (I think in a review of CBS's Elementary) that technically every adaption of Sherlock Holmes after Conan Doyle is "fanfiction" in a sense, and it's easy to see that some are really excellent stories. (::cough::BBC Sherlock::cough::) Those movies and TV series may be "continuing someon... (more) |
— | over 11 years ago |