Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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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) |
— | over 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) |
— | over 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) |
— | over 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) |
— | over 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) |
— | over 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) |
— | over 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) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Moving away from a gender-based analysis I've always considered the two poles as cooperative and competitive. Cooperators want to do things in a group, to get the opinions if not the consensus of others, and consider their own wants secondary to those of others. Competitors want to come up with a solution individually and then impose it o... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What is the correct way to use semicolons vs. commas vs. em dashes? First of all, that semi-colon is incorrect. It should be a comma. Here's why. A semi-colon is used 1) to join two independent clauses (stand-alone sentences) which are related in content, or 2) to separate lists of items which have commas, aka the serial semi-colon. The sentence here has parallel g... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Indent dialogue to make text look less blocky If your paragraph is a gray wall of text, break it up where it makes sense. You aren't required to break it only on dialogue. And trim your narration too: > A figure under the box moved behind Professor. John yelled “Professor! Watch out!” Professor didn't hear him. > > John had no choice. He leapt... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What type of character should I write about first in a potential series of books? I suggest you start with an Innocent (or an Outsider) — a Cabbagehead kind of character, someone who doesn't know anything about your world so the world has to be explained to and/or experienced by this character. This gives you an easy path to explain things about your world to the reader, because ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Screenplay vs Novel A screenplay is meant to be performed. A novel is meant to be read. (You can have an audio recording of a novel, but that's still someone reading it aloud, not a radio drama.) A screenplay has stage directions. A novel has chunks of prose descriptions. The difference is whether you intend for you... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Question mark in use with colon Your problem is that your givens are incorrect. You don't need a colon, and you have the question mark in the wrong spot. Stripped of the confusing detail, your sentence reads > Should I place the order in X? You don't need a colon before the X in this sentence structure. You have a question; you ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Should I capitalise the first letter of a title that an unnamed character has? This depends on how the character sees himself (or if it's close third-person from someone else's POV, how that character sees him). If he is one sentinel of many — so it's a kind of descriptor, like "the soldier" or "the doctor" — and he's somewhat anonymous, then keep it lowercase. If he is the o... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: What are the standard genre characteristics of contemporary women's fantasy As a female reader of SF/F who enjoys fantasy books with protagonists of whatever gender and plot, my advice is: Make it interesting. - It doesn't matter if the basic plot structure is older than dirt. Your details are what make it fresh. - Make the characters people I can believe in, and care abou... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How do I spot an unintentional promise in my story? Pay attention to your editor's/beta readers' reactions. Ask specifically: - Were you satisfied with the story? - Did it do what you think it set out to do? - Were you suprised in a bad way about anything? - Do you feel like the story arcs concluded properly? (obviously if you've left cliffhangers yo... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: How to derive a storyline from a beginning? 1) Related to Secespitus's answer: Are you familiar with Rory's Story Cubes? they are dice with little icons on the sides rather than pips or numbers. They might be stick figures doing something, an object, an cloud, fire, a book, etc. For kids, you roll the dice and use whatever comes up to make up ... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: What's the least distracting method to inform editors I'm a woman? Use a courtesy title which reflects your gender. Sign your submission as " Ms. Morgan Meredith." Subtle but unambiguous. (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Traits of Bad Writers - Analysing Popular Authors My complaint about Paolini was that he took a reasonably generic plot idea and... wrote it generically. His worldbuilding wasn't original, in any capacity. His characters were boring. His elves were cookie-cutter, if you'll pardon the phrase. It particularly ticked me off because he was writing abou... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Capitalization after use of colon? I have seen capital letters after colons if what comes after the colon is a full sentence: > These rules have only one purpose: They are meant to humiliate. If you remove the subject and verb, the word after the colon stays lowercase: > These rules have only one purpose: to humiliate. (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Which is the correct way to punctuate this dialogue with ellipses? Aside from the third item being correct, as others have noted, the punctuation around the dialogue tag reflects how it interacts with your two pieces of dialogue. An ellipsis indicates that the speaker is trailing off at the end, or gradually building up to speaking at the beginning. You can have an... (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: What is the name of the service or job title for typing handwritten manuscripts? I'm personally fond of the term amanuensis, and while I hardly ever get to use it, this sounds like the perfect legitimate need: > A person employed to write or type what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another (more) |
— | almost 7 years ago |
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A: Indie Publishing with more than one POD publisher & ISBN You absolutely can publish your book with CreateSpace and NOOK at the same time. Each print version needs its own ISBN. I wrote to B&N about this exact issue, and this was their response, emphasis mine: > Please note: Each NOOK Press print book needs a new ISBN that has never been used on any other... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: Is a character with a hidden Power too strong? Depends on what the powers are, and what the weaknesses are. Can your character fly but nobody else can? Or can he always parallel-park perfectly on the first shot? Does he have super strength or the ability to get a ball into a net? Does he need to eat so much after using his power that he's consta... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What do sentences look like in a rough draft before they are combined into a cumulative sentence? Sophistication and polish and complexity are not for the first draft. Period. Your first draft is meant to be the rough, crappy one. It's getting your ideas out. You are letting the perfect become the enemy of the good — you're so worried about making it awesome that you aren't allowing yoursel... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: What is the balance between 'stating a problem clearly' and Hemingway's literary iceberg? Without having seen your piece, of course, I can only speculate, but I wonder if what you were doing was the opposite of predictability: You signaled you were going straight, or right, when your goal was to go left. I disagree that every book has to be a safe, predictable "the same but different," a... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: I wrote a book, but changed my mind on the ending Sorry, you may have to die a bit. Make a copy of your plot outline. (You have an outline, right? No? Then you'll have to create one after the fact. Read through your existing book and pick out the outline from what you wrote. That's your "original.") Take your original outline and put it next to th... (more) |
— | about 7 years ago |
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A: How to keep track of characters' location, within a longer narrative? I use Excel. You do have to keep track of your own material — nothing will do it for you — but a basic spreadsheet with columns of Chapter, Scene, Location, Day of Week, Time of Day, and maybe Characters will do wonders for keeping you organized. My answer to Is there any good time-line softwa... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How to make "Joffrey like" characters for a "kick that son of a bitch " moment Someone who deserves to be smeared over a brick wall doesn't have reedeming features. That's not to say the villain is stupid, or one-dimensional, or his/her only motive is "I like to be eeeeeeevil." But if you are trying to create a character "who needs killin'," then don't give him or her any good... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What are the acts of a story? Roughly speaking, acts divide the action into sections. At the end of each act is a turning point. Some disaster has befallen the protagonist(s), who must then choose whether to turn back or go forward. The Snowflake Method guy calls his acts "three disasters and an ending." In the Hero's Journey, t... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Saying "The" too frequently oh mercy, "the" is invisible. Stop fretting so much. Write your story. Write it with repeated words, with TK placeholders everywhere, wif badly grammar, with too much emphasis, with lots of... ellipses... with CAPS EVEN!! But write. Just write. Edit later. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Book translation from English to Portuguese Translation is best done by humans. There is no software available to push a button and Make This Portuguese, and even if there is, word-for-word translation simply can't capture the nuance and meaning of idioms and language-specific phrasing. Saying someone "has horns" in European countries means so... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: When do I successfully kill off an important secondary main character... in a series of five books? 1) Might one ask why the character destined to die is named... Cancer? I'm just calling him "Charlie" for the rest of this discussion. 2) Does Charlie have any agency, life, personality, or background of his own, or is his purpose in the story to be fridged and provide manpain for the MC? I'm actua... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad writing practice to open a story with a time frame when the time frame is irrelevant? Your story generally happens at some particular moment, whether you're telling it in the present tense or past tense. There's nothing wrong with describing actions which happened a precise amount of time before your book opens. Separately, adding a time stamp "just to add rhythm to the sentence" is ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Acronyms in Technical Writing Whether you put the acronym or the name first depends on how everyone refers to it. If it's almost always an acronym, but you have to explain it on first reference, write it as: > New drugs to treat HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) are promising. If it's usually spelled out and you are introducin... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What writing process should I use to produce the kind of writing I want? 1) You're trying to write your final polished draft on your first shot. It won't happen. Focus on one goal at a time. First determine your substance. Then organize it. Then write it. Never mind how it sounds. Just get it on paper. Your inner editor is becoming an inner censor. You can fix it later. G... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How significant a role have editors played on books published in the past? Two examples spring to mind, neither exactly your situation: Christopher Tolkien did work on his father's oeuvre, but that's more curation than editing. He did cobble together The Children of Húrin from pieces, but that isn't quite your situation. A more recent but negative exampe is Go Set a Watch... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How does the 3 act structure fit in a Non Linear story? The three-act or five-act structure can still exist even if the elements are not shown in order. It's the effect on the audience which is changed. In the case of Memento, you see the end first, and then work backwards through all the successes and setbacks. The "end," the resolution, becomes an inci... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What things should one highlight as good in beta reading feedback? Things that are good are things which you liked, and elements which achieved what the writer was going for. - Funny bits: anything which makes you laugh (which is clearly supposed to) - Nice turns of phrase - A moment which touches you - A suspenseful scene which leaves you tense and breathless - A ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it plausible for a narrator to "hear" and describe sounds which would normally be out of earshot? > for the sake of extra detail There's your problem. Don't add extra detail which your POV character can't perceive. Find someplace else to put the pretty phrase or leave it in your slush file. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Will bookstores order a self-published book if customers request it? I have gone to my local bookstore to order a self-published book. I gave them the ISBN, they ordered it, it arrived a week later, I walked in and completed the transaction. The book is now on my shelf. So yes, it's possible. Whether your local bookstore will do it is up to the store. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How To Define The Compelling Need Of My Reader 1) Marketing a product is not "convincing someone to buy something they do not want" or "giving the people what they want." It is creating a need in the buyer which s/he either didn't have or didn't realize was there before. That's what ads do: convince people "You NEED this!" 2) Selling a story is ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is Ice/Fire opposition too stereotypical? I wouldn't just use fire and ice. The classic Four Elements (earth, air, fire, water) have been used for mythological and magical structures for many stories. Look at the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra cartoon series just for starters. Having mages whose powers fall into one of those... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Are different levels of character development required for primary as opposed to secondary characters? Yes, you can develop secondary characters, and should to the extent your narrative has room. While they are multi-volume arcs, David & Leigh Eddings's Belgariad and Malloreon series are good examples of this. The main character is Garion, later Belgarion. Other major protagonists are his aunt Polgar... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Question regarding narration and 1st - 3rd person swaps If it's really short — no more than a few paragraphs — set it off with italics. It should quickly become apparent from context who the first-person-italics character is. If it's pages and pages, make the husband's parts interstitial bits between chapters of Sam's story, and label them as S... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: When to stop the story line? Your story line should have an arc: a beginning (problem), middle (attempts to fix the problem), and end (resolution of the problem). If you have multiple story lines, each one has its own arc. There can be an arc which stretches over multiple books. Sometimes each individual book has its own beginn... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Where do I write 'The End'? After the last word of the story, before any aftermatter like a glossary, author's note, list of characters, timeline, or appendix. So yes, after the epilogue, because the epilogue is still part of the story even if it's the denouement and after the climax. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How much of a character's past/background should I let on? Only put in what is necessary for the plot. You develop the character so that the actions s/he takes make sense for the plot. If the character reveals something about his/her past, there should be a plot-related reason for it. (That reason might be another character's reaction, or how it furthers a ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Do you pluralize a Roman numeral? You don't ever use apostrophes to form plurals, so that's right out. If the Roman numeral is part of the name, you would add an S: A total of 15 Saturn Vs were built, but only 13 were flown. If you have two people sharing a title, you pluralize the title (the Doctors Smith, the Ensigns Kim). But if... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Worth writing, if end is obvious Just because The Crunch happens doesn't mean that your protagonists all lose. Yes, the obvious antagonist is The Crunch. But is that all your heroes are fighting? Is that all they're striving for? All your heroes are facing imminent doom. That does things to people. They may lose faith, or gain it ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |