Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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A: Self publishing: Do I still need to follow the arbitrary word count limits? My feeling is that you shouldn't add more words than the story needs to be told properly, regardless of how it's being published. Why pad it with garbage? (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Do I have to revise my book on paper? I think you should do both. You will, without question, catch things on paper you don't see on the screen. It just looks different. I don't know why, but many years of experience have shown me this is true. However, you can also do a pass while reading it onscreen. I would use this method as a way ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to effectively jump from one period of time to another in a short story? Same way you would with any scene break: double return, a row of \ \ \ \ \ \ \, whatever you usually do to indicate a scene change. Your "Hundreds of years later" makes the point. (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Do parentheses inhibit clarity? As with any technique, use it when it makes the text easier to understand, and don't overdo it (unless you're overdoing it deliberately as a stylistic choice, which should then be obvious). (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Citing in a paper: one citation for two paragraphs? If your professor wants it, put it in, regardless of aesthetic considerations. If your professor wants to you type from the bottom up, in sparkling teal ink, in Comic Sans... that's how you format it. (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How important is it to know the end before the writing the beginning? Like all rules, this can be broken if the end result is what you want. Some people are "discovery writers" (aka "pants writers"). They just sit down to write, and watch the story unfold as if they were watching TV. Some people have to have everything structured and sketched out before they begin. T... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Is it more advantageous to have an excerpt or a plot summary critiqued? I agree with Neil. It doesn't matter how pretty it sounds if the plot is weak. Present your plot first, in outline, bullets, summary, however it makes sense, and have them beat the crap out of that first. Once you have a solid plot, then you can worry about getting down on paper. (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Sympathetic portrayal of an evil protagonist with good motivations 1) Does the story have to be from the POV of the necromancer? Or at the least, does the end have to be? You can show all the necromancer's challenges from the POV of the people of the nation, and its leaders, as they try to defend themselves, and in the epilogue or the denouement, someone (could be ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Where in a CV should I mention a relevant but unpaid (volunteer) project? If you did it for educational credit, put it with Education. If you did it in a field which happens to be the one in which you got your degree, but your university didn't care one way or the other, put it under Work. Timeframe is always just dates: September 2008–May 2010. (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: What qualities should a good metaphor have? A good metaphor will parallel or easily invoke the idea you're trying to convey, without extraneous or irrelevant details. It resonates with the audience and may add to the core idea. A poor metaphor has baggage of its own, doesn't track with the original concept, is too clunky, too esoteric, needs ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: My story portrays a process, not a conflict - how do I make the process my focus? Each character or set of characters has their own arc. "How will this develop?" is that arc. The simplest way to tie all the arcs together is to set them all in the same period of time. Try starting with the same event at the beginning of each character's section — for added emphasis, use exactly th... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to plan dialog and keep it on track? A little riffing, a little planning. I tend to sketch out a scene in notes and bullets beforehand, so I know more or less where it's going and what I want to accomplish. I'm "watching" the characters interact in my head as I'm jotting down notes, and sometimes entire exchanges come out of that. Onc... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to objectively judge the storytelling in a writing contest? I see two separate paths you can take: 1) You might have to back up and set down some rules for the writing before developing rules for the judging. For example, if one of your judging rules is "The story must have a beginning, middle, and end," but someone submits an amazing in medias res piece, i... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How can I search for words by meaning/definition? It's a phrase in English, not a word: "Separating the wheat from the chaff." (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How do I cleanly show the passage of time, with multiple, varying time scales? If your concern is the how-to of changing perspective, you can do it a few ways, but the idea should always be that you finish one beat, and the next beat starts the different time-voice: 1) End the current chapter and start a new one. That allows you to have a different POV, a different time-scale... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: "Lacking meat", "Content-free", and poor defense-development. Please critique my work The paragraph starting "Recently" is where you go vegetarian. You set up your pitch in the first three paras, state your premise in the fourth, play a little devil's advocate in the fifth... and then trail off. You've removed the status quo, but you haven't replaced it with anything. Yes, commercial... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Do I correctly utilize my naming adjective concept in this book? No, it doesn't work, and no, I don't think you're using the technique correctly. When you use descriptions attached to someone's name, it is to differentiate them from someone else with that name. To use a stereotypical example, take an Italian neighborhood with five friends all named Joseph. One w... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How/When to create deliberately boring characters? The real question is: boring to the writer, boring to the reader, or boring to the other characters? If the character bores you as the writer, either change the character or excise him/her. That person has no place in your story. I just had to do this myself two weeks ago, and it made a massive, awe... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: APA Formatting - Changing Adjectives in a quote Knowing nothing about APA formatting, I would say that the material in quotes should stay quoted — use "our," since it's a direct quote which you immediately cite. I don't see a reason to change the actual quote, and your summary in the previous sentence uses "their" correctly in context. There are ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: When to use the character's name and when to use she/he? There's no rule; it's all by ear. Write it however it seems to work at the time, put it aside for a week and reread it, and then have a friend review it to see if it works. The goal is that the reader should know exactly who is speaking and/or acting, and when. Do whatever you need to do to make it ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A tricky serial semi-colon A serial comma is used to separate a list of items: > For breakfast, we had ham, eggs, and toast. A serial semi-colon is used when items in the list have commas: > For breakfast, we had ham, eggs, and toast; orange juice, coffee, and milk; pancakes, waffles, and French toast; and a Pepto-Bismol ch... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to improve the ending of my short novel (mostly dialogue)? 1) As far as concept, there's nothing to improve. I like this quite a bit. The mystery and the philosophy dovetail nicely. There isn't a lot of action, and whatever "happens" is occurring in dialogue. This works really well. 2) Action tags can be almost anywhere you like; it's mostly a choice of sty... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: When to use single quotes in narrative writing? ...actually, so far as I know, one does not have stylistic freedom in using single or double quotes as one pleases. (Not in prose, anyway — all bets are off in poetry.) In American English, dialogue or other quoted material goes in double quotes: > "There is no fate but what we make," she said. Qu... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How can I catch more errors when I proofread? Read from the bottom up. It derails the comprehension so it's much easier to see individual words, and you catch many more typos and dropped words. (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Will this opening and dialogue grab the reader's attention? And how can I improve it? You are definitely improving from your previous work. :) Minor fixes: My corrections are in italics; do not add the italics to your story. - "No other human presence" makes me wonder: is there a non-human presence? An animal? Something supernatural? - pointing at her glass - then glanced around (th... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to write polite deadline email? > Just a reminder: I need your feedback by this Tuesday, 10 April, before 2pm. Thanks! (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to use "I think, therefore I am" in a more fluent manner? First of all, you have a tense disagreement: "we had undergone" is past, so you need "confused" and "made." A few variants: - ...made us re-experience Descartes's proclamation: "I think, therefore I am." - ...made us re-experience Descartes's proclamation: Cogito, ergo sum. We thought, therefore we... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How to write a powerful but uncomplicated conference biography? Rather than "deployed": helped to launch I've no idea what an "enterprise application" is, so perhaps that could be rephrased. The problem with "he is an advocate for agile software development practices" is that "agile software development" is an actual jargon phrase. If you don't want it to mess ... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Is it overkill to follow style-guides for technical writing? Purchase it? Yes. I don't think you need to read it cover-to-cover unless you're a serious language geek who reads dictionaries for fun. ::cough::cough:: (Pulling out my 14th edition for reference...) I would try to read as much of "The Parts of a Book" and "Manuscript Preparation" as you can befor... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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Is there a name for this kind of sentence structure? I've seen this construction quite a bit, although only in the last five years or so. It's a transcription of a way of speaking, where the speaker is emphasizing something by using a verbal full stop after several words in a row, no matter where it is in the sentence. To wit: - Please don't use the "... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: How best to handle revealing a main character's name midway through a long story in close-third person? David Eddings does this in the Belgariad pentology. Main character Garion is introduced to a man whom his Aunt Pol calls "Old Wolf," and Garion decides to call him "Mister Wolf." Mister Wolf later announces to other characters, "This is what Garion is calling me, and I happen to like it, so that's w... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Avoiding "and" as a sentence structure In addition to Monica's great suggestions for structure once you've located the problem, you need to develop a way to find all the problem sentences. Either at the beginning or end of every writing session, search through your new text and look for and. Look at every pair of clauses you've joined an... (more) |
— | over 12 years ago |
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A: Petty Character "Petty" is making emotional mountains out of molehills. It's a way of being self-centered and having no larger perspective, and no empathy for others. It's not being difficult for the sake of being difficult, but rather being difficult because one can't move beyond one's own concerns to see things f... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Is the order of appendices according to their references fixed? I would have no problem putting appendices in "logical" order. An appendix is referred to out-of-context or out of order anyway, so what difference does it make if your footnote sends the reader to Appendix A, Q, or IV? (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Deaf speechmarks? We just addressed this recently, and the excellent answer suggested was guillemets. « and » (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: How do I use my blog as a platform for practice and improvement? Your next step is to start editing yourself. First up: clean out those clichés, redundant words, and worn-out filler phrases you're relying on without even noticing. To wit: > ...and started a blog site in order to become a better writer and communicator. ..and started to blog to improve my writing... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: What tense to use in an academic paper when speaking about correspondence? I am not in academia, but I think if you would use the present tense for a book, then a letter — which presumably has to be published for you to have access to it — would fall under the same rule. Otherwise you have something like, "John Adams writes in Defence of the Constitution that England is a ... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Problems with constructing a complex sentence with many ideas in it The problem is actually with "back and forth." That's because back is the return, but in the idiom it's placed before forth, which is the "going out" part. If you use take over and bring back, you'll eliminate some of the confusion. Streamline it and cut some of the figurative fluff. You want someth... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Not knowing a character's name. Would this be frustrating for the reader? If your story is for an audience of one, your reader can finish the story, look up from the page, and ask you "what's the woman's name?" Problem solved. (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Explaining that experience is far greater than official job title implies Been there, done that, designed the T-shirt. Some suggested bullet points, mix and match as needed: - Acted as secondary point-of-contact with clients - Assisted Account Managers in dealing with client contacts - Acted as junior Account Manger. Handled significant direct client contact. Upsold exist... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Should I prefer long or short sentences in scientific writing? You want to do whatever makes the text easiest to understand. For me, that means a mix of long and short sentences. Scientific writing is already going to be dense and complex. There are times when you have to write long sentences because you have to string a lot of information together, and separat... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Best practices for maintaining documented code examples? I would actually answer this with my graphic designer hat on: all code should be given a particular style in the layout program (font in particular, but type size, margins, justification), and then you just Search for each iteration of that style. It's still manual, but you won't miss any. (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: How do I balance reading time with writing time? Your problem is not making time for reading. You have two other problems: 1. You're giving up too quickly on writing. 2. You surf too much. First, as John Smithers wisely says, disconnect your internet connection. The web will still be here when you come back, I promise. Second, you say "I'm never... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: How does one avoid bland, generic fantasy while they write? On the first draft: you won't. First drafts are almost invariably clunkers. But your first draft is not meant to shine. Your first draft is meant to get the story onto paper and out of your head where it's been languishing for years. Once it's on paper, then you can edit, revise, polish, and get an... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: A friendlier way to write charges or fees to clients? "The cost of the development and hosting is $100. / The hosting and development will cost $100" are both fine. I also use "I estimate the hosting and development will cost $100" if it's genuinely an estimate which might change. (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: I want to explore the psychology of a ruthless, macho killer. What mistakes should I avoid? Absolutely not a mistake to explore his psychology. GRRMartin is a great example; by the end of book 4 I really felt for the Lannisters, and they have done some evil things. You don't have to make Pio so sympathetic that we're necessarily rooting for him to kill Sal, but we should understand Pio's mo... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: Is Scrivener involved in the editorial process, or is it strictly a writer's development tool? Scrivener does have a Comment or Sticky-Note function. You can also use a Highlight to mark big swathes of text, change the color of inserted copy, and Strike-Through to cross things out. As John Smithers wisely points out, Scrivener isn't just for writing the draft. It also allows you to gather not... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: How do you avoid the problem of a collaborative work having separate voices? If you want to unify the voices: Get a tough editor. Explain to him/her that you have two authors and you want to standardize their voices. You might pick a passage or a chapter which particularly reflects both writers, and say "make it all sound like that." Then be prepared to have a whole chunk of... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: How can I make description more natural to me? I try to describe something or someone the first time we meet them, so the reader has something to hold onto, and I do it from the POV of whatever character is in focus at the moment. So let's say we open with a squabble between a married couple over getting the kids to all their activities over the... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |
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A: ISBN - does it uniquely identify book dimension? I'm working with a writer who's self-publishing, and she had to get a different ISBN for the hardcover, softcover, and eBook versions of her novel. I remember reading somewhere that if you issue a new version of the book (change the content in any significant way), you need a new ISBN as well. So yes... (more) |
— | almost 13 years ago |