Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Tips for humor writing 1) Pick any one item and take it to an extreme. "Organizing is good." - Okay, can I alphabetize my spices?(bad example. I actually do that.) - Uh, can I sort my vegetable drawer by size and then by color? - How about putting the living room furniture in rainbow order? - Where do I file the cat, un... (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: Writing your last will and testament I Am Not A Lawyer, but so far as I know, you can make your will as formal or casual as you like. What matters is that it's signed as yours. I don't know the legal requirements for having it dated or witnessed. I ran through WillMaker once and it was straightforward plain language. (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: What to do about noun clusters Howzabout: > The Web Product Provider's search result, "Individual Provider Map," does not... If I in fact understood that chunk of jargon correctly. (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: Short Story first or skip to Screenplay I'm not a movie expert either, but for all the same reasons Bernardo suggests, I think you should create a detailed outline and storyboards rather than either a short story or a screenplay. You want to tell the story before filming it. You need feedback to make sure the story works. However, the det... (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: How to write great movie review? 1. Snappy headline. 2. Compelling lead. 3. Say what you liked. 4. Say what you didn't like. 5. Optional: a little analysis. 6. Optional: compare some aspect of the film, actors, or director to something else in the genre or the person's body of work. 7. Solid close. 8. Write it as though you were add... (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: Byronic Hero characters Short answer: cynicism is a version of "playing hard-to-get," which some people find attractive. You seduce by allowing yourself to be chased. Long answer: Someone who's cynical can be an attractive target for a naïve person who wants to "save" or "fix" the Byronist. "I know Charlie is so world-wear... (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: Where to find some good examples of combat or action scenes? I'm just now reading the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin, which has plenty of good swordfights and describes the mechanics pretty well. Mercedes Lackey is good at describing tactics of army movements (at a swords-and-sorcery tech level) with generic fighting descriptions. (more) |
— | about 13 years ago |
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A: Is translation work likely to help me develop my own writing abilities? I don't know about creative, but I imagine it will help strengthen your facility with the language. You will be working to re-create a thought, an image, a sound from a foreign language into English, keeping faithful to the original somehow while making it work in the new language. Your vocabulary an... (more) |
— | over 13 years ago |
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A: What is the preferred way to type out ellipses? Speaking as a writer, editor, and typesetter: use three dots, no spaces. The spaces are unattractive and potentially allow the line to break mid-ellipsis. As far as the "high ASCII" character, those occasionally get chewed up in file translation (I just got a file from a client where all the smart d... (more) |
— | over 13 years ago |
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A: How do I better handle my nameless main character when trying to retain mystery? "The man" also works. The man's job was very stressful...The man only knew his boss by one name... If you give him any other identifiers, like "tall" or "with sunglasses," that will allow you some variety. (also, use a semi-colon after "slumber" in the first sentence, not a comma.) (more) |
— | over 13 years ago |
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A: How do you avoid purple prose? "Purple prose" is overwrought metaphors, melodramatic and clichéd phrasing, and cartoonish actions. She gasped, her snow-white breast heaving, and her emerald eyes filled with tears. "How could you! You vile beast!" she sobbed. "I loved you and you — you used me!" "I never loved you," he announced... (more) |
— | over 13 years ago |
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A: What tools do you use for your writing journal? Applications: I cannot say enough good things about Scrivener, from Literature & Latte (for Mac). It's not a word-processing program, it's a writing program. You can organize notes, drag "notecards" and folders around, block out the rest of your screen, paste in photos and movie clips, and use a virt... (more) |
— | over 13 years ago |
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A: Correct spelling errors while writing or after you've finished? Another suggestion: Today, you write for an hour, finish, close the document, walk away. Tomorrow, the first thing you do is take 15 minutes to re-read what you wrote, fix typos, correct grammar, and make edits. By the time you're done straightening up, you should be back in the flow of the story, a... (more) |
— | over 13 years ago |