Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How do I improve "beige" text? Further to Mark Baker's excellent answer: If you want your writing to be more colorful, practice observing and recording colorful things. I don't necessary mean literal color, although that's not a bad thing either, but to take regular, scheduled time to observe people, actions, sensations, scenery,... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is it bad not to explain things? My only objection to It Just Happens is when you overload the suspension of disbelief. You can draw on the power of the ancients for magic? great. You can draw on said power for flight, telekinesis, telepathy, physical transmogrification, healing, fighting, blasting fireballs, warding off someone e... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How do you write dialog for a character with malapropism without it seeming forced? Is this a comedic story or a straightforward/dramatic one? If it's a comedic story, then just run with it, because everything is supposed to be exaggerated. Your characters may not even have to note the malaprops. If it's a straightforward one, then the other characters should notice the slips. If ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: "The flux capacitor--it's what makes time travel possible." When to keep world-building explanations short It's a Your Mileage May Vary situation, but I think there are two good rules of thumb: 1) Explain only as much as you need for the story to make sense. This will vary depending on your audience, but roughly, anything specialized to your world or your story will need a minimum of explanation. Your re... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to introduce alien flora/fauna without turning the fiction into a biology book? It's just scene-setting. Your main character gets up in the morning and goes out onto her balcony to enjoy the morning while her caffeine is brewing, and she contemplates all the plants in her garden. As her eyes linger over each, describe them briefly, maybe with little stories about why she likes i... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Ways of describing new characters? - Clothes - Smell (cologne/perfume, the scents that may be in clothing or hair) - Body language (swagger, creep, stroll, cringing, stride) - Attitude (businesslike, flirtatious, bored, scared, tired) - Voice (tone, volume, accent, husky/smooth, high/low, speech impediment) - Age - Race - Species if i... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to show a brief hesitation around a word 1) Use the ellispses and emphasis, and tighten up the spaces. > This man, this...monster...has done something despicable. There's no typesetting reason to have spaces on both sides of those ellipses, particularly since you aren't removing words. Plus you're writing fiction, and the use of ellipses ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Naming non-English folklore creatures I really like the -ar plural, and I think you should keep it regardless. You don't always have to obey the rules of English if your original word isn't. English is rife with loan words from other languages, so there's plenty of precedent. Look at cherub and cherubim (the correct plural, I believe fro... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Romance without cliche? Given that you haven't given us a lot of the givens... Not every romance is cliché. There are formulas, to be sure (c.f. Harlequin, Nicholas Sparks, Lifetime), but just because the tropes are heavily used doesn't mean you have to use them, or that they have to feel worn. So: Pick up the nearest rom... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is it bad storytelling to have things happen by complete chance? Complete chance? Yes. That's a form of deus ex machina, where something outside the hero/ine's actions swoops in at the end to save the day. If something arbitrary outside the plot advances it without the hero's actions, that's poor storytelling. So how do you fix that? You already did: > Well actu... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How do I gain sufficient emotional distance from my work to edit it? Beyond time and cleansing your brain-palate, which others have noted here, I found that being a little "off" helps me, oddly enough. A little sleepy (like foregoing my morning coffee), a little hyper (several extra cups of coffee), working in somebody else's house, working on somebody else's machine.... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: A long backstory right at the beginning This is a Your Mileage May Vary question. There's no way for us to say if it's boring wthout reading it. Write your book, polish it, hand it to a beta reader, and ask if your backstory is boring or engaging. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Should capitalization be used for emphasis for a character's tone? All caps has come to mean shouting. You can have a voice which is harsh but not loud. So no, I wouldn't use all caps to mean something which is difficult to listen to. Describe it as "harsh" and let your readers imagine what that sounds like. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Creating a story in which the hero(es) lose > I for one, would love to read a follow up novel about a world ruled by orcs. So let me ask you this: Why not write that book instead? In fact, why not make the orcs the heroes of your story? - Could the orcs be in rebellion against your Sauron character? Could they be done with the entire thing ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How many rewrites should a writer expect for a novel? I don't think there can be an answer for this. I don't think you can even have an answer for a given writer. Mercedes Lackey rewrote her first trilogy seventeen times, but now she churns out books every year or so. (whether they are any good is a different question.) Barbara Cartland wrote over 700 b... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Tips on engaging the audience in the first chapter? Create engaging characters and put them in situations with high stakes. The characters in your first chapter (or prologue) don't even have to be main characters. They don't even have to survive to the next chapter. But we have to care about them, and we have to want to find out what happens next. T... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: What if my story seems too similar to a particular movie? I'll approach this from a different angle than the two great answers already here. Let's assume that yes, your story is too similar to an existing, fairly well-known property. How do you fix that? 1) Address the root cause. Figure out the story you're trying to tell, and how your similar aspects tel... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Where in the writing process do you work in subtext? In the BBC Sherlock fandom there are many lively discussions about how a lot of the story takes place in subtext: Person C is a "mirror" for Protagonist A, water symbolizes emotions, drinking tea means X and drinking coffee means Y, the phone represents the heart, and so on. Writer William Goldman ha... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Suffixing words with -ness, -ish, -like, and others The extent to which you can do this varies depending on your audience, but generally, I wouldn't do it with a thoroughly unknown word. Tonitrus is an excellent example. Great word, means what you need it to mean, but in itself it's already so rare that your readers will have to look it up. If you are... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is alliteration distracting and not very valuable/interesting for the reader? I definitely noticed the alliterations. They stood out, and were frankly jarring. If you were writing poetry, or prose which is echoing poetry, I'd tell you to go for it, but if your point is to tell a story, then using poetic tools may get in the way. Part of the joy of poetry is the sound of the w... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How do I handle a backstory big enough to be a story of its own? I'd be fine with your backstory as a standalone novella which functions as a prequel to your main story. Harry Connolly did this with his Twenty Palaces series. There's a main trilogy, and then a prequel novel about how the main character came to be where he was at the start of the trilogy. The preq... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is it good to repeat the same form of event? It's a little convenient, but you can get around that a few ways: 1) Hang a lampshade on it. That is, have the characters point out that they found that other MacGuffin at the treasury too, and what else did the king hide in here? Good grief, is that Amelia Earhart's luggage? Turns out the king was ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How can I describe technology while avoiding problems with scaling? If you've worked out the tech, why haven't you worked out the scale? Isn't that part of "working out the tech"? Just coming up with the idea of "a rocket that goes to the moon" isn't sufficient. You have to come up with how it goes to the moon. If your story is meant to be realistic, then you have t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Characters with very long names or titles When he is introduced in the story, and when he receives a new title, give the full title. If he's being introduced when he walks into an important event or a throne room, it's contextually appropriate for other characters to give all his names and titles: His Majesty the Emperor Don Luis Maria de J... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to refer to clothes without modern words ? (e.g: t-shirt) The answer to this is "do your research." If you're writing about Ancient Egypt, you start by Googling "clothes in Ancient Egypt." If you're really serious, you find books about Ancient Egypt and go to museums to study what's been unearthed, written, and saved. Your paucity of imagination is remedi... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Expressing large numbers in dialogue? Digits tend to be read faster and are less important. Spelling out numbers takes longer to read and are emphasized. So there are two things to consider: 1) How do people think of dates? Do you think of this year as "twenty seventeen" or "two thousand seventeen"? Was Bill Clinton president in the "ni... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to distinguish two different voices in one book? Set off your part with some kind of identifier: > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is there any stylistic reason to avoid the word "got"? It depends on the context. It can be casual, but it's the correct past tense of "to get." > I got sick. > I got a book for my birthday. > I got there in time. Perfectly correct, if slightly casual. You could rewrite to "I became sick, I received a book, I arrived in time," but you'd start to co... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Where to put a pronunciation key? I wouldn't object to a half-page of pronounciation key at the front as part of the front matter. A six-page listing of characters, main houses, a glossary, etc. would be too much, but "Here's a quick rundown of how to say everything" before I start would be much appreciated. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Editing a memoir you could try Title by Relative with Aparente (I have also seen "as told to," which to me means the person in question sat for multiple interviews and the writer collated and wrote everything down in first person even though it wasn't the writer's story.) (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How do I know when my work is ready for critique? There are different types of critique/editing, and different benchmarks for each. There is content editing, which can be more easily called critique, which deals with the actual story. Then there is line editing, also called proofreading. You should first do your own line editing or proofreading to... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Are metaphors superior to similes in the following cases? > We faced away from each other awkwardly, as if we were on the first date we never had. A hypothetical or conditional, not a metaphor. > We faced away from each other awkwardly, portraying the first date we never had. Description. What you want is: > We faced away from each other awkwardly, two... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Writing a novel, can I do [this or that]? Sure, why not? Get it on paper, kick it around a bit, and then hand it off to an editor to see if it worked. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Would it be possible to write a novel without using the word "The"? Well, someone wrote a book without using the letter E), so by default the wasn't used. (according to Wiki, it does slip in three times. Very hard to avoid. Plus technically it's on the cover.) Whether the book is any good is an exercise left to the reader. I suppose it would be fun to do as a challe... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Should I italicize neologisms created by communities? I might italicize them the first time, in narration, to emphasize that they are neologisms, and then have a definition immediately afterwards. Once you've defined the term, though, you don't have to italicize it again. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Will it help you to get published if you have a lot of followers of your writing? If you have supporters following your blog, you might be able to argue that you have an audience who will buy your writing. However, to be meaningful to an agent and therefore a publisher, your audience has to be in the thousands at the least, and even better, have already paid for some of your stuf... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is writing only scenes a good way to earn writing skills? I think it's a great exercise to strengthen your writing skills. You can focus on one thing to improve — descriptions, or characterization, or pacing, or sentence structure — and just focus on that, instead of worrying about how it fits into the overall scheme of your book. There's no pressure to adh... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How do you use showing in animal fantasy? If your animals are anthropomorphized, you can come pretty close to describing human-level expressions, depending on the animal in question. If your animals are not sentient, you have to study the animal in question to be able to describe its body language. I've had cats my entire life, so I can des... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Impact of views about author on buying book I think an author's personal stance can absolutely be a deal-breaker. I won't buy or read anything more from Orson Scott Card now that I know about his raging homophobia. It would be an endorsement of his views. (So this would be a counter-example to @MarkBaker's third point.) I could never complete... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Do I write the entire series and edit, or edit the books as I go? Personally I would do the the following: - Write them all. Get all your first drafts done. - Review them all. Get to a decent second or third draft on all three. - Send your first book to an editor. When the editor gives that back, review the edits while the editor works on the second. Do the same w... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Why are writers so hung up on "show versus tell"? You are confused about what's being shown. "Show, don't tell" means "show us that the hero is confused by describing the look on his face and how he stutters and drops things" rather than saying in narration "He was confused." It doesn't mean "don't describe the room he's in." If you don't like a lo... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Use of past tense in a book about the future No, you can't randomly switch to the present tense like that. You are telling your story in past tense, even if you're talking about the future relative to us. News stories can switch to the present tense for the general because they are reporting on facts which are relative to the moment you're rea... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Any suggestions for a new writer? You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Let's be blunt: your initial efforts will suck. That's because every writer's initial efforts suck. Stephen King? Sucked. JK Rowling? Sucked. Octavia Butler? Sucked. Shakespeare? Suckethed. Your goal is not to write something perfect. Your go... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: What kinds of skill does writing require? "Write what you see in your head"? That first takes observational skills. What are you seeing? Are you seeing all of it? Are you also listening, smelling, tasting, feeling? Are you observing your (or the character's) heart rate, blood pressure, nausea, backache, muscle fatigue, excitement? That all ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is it a bad habit to only write at night? You found a time when you can write. Why on earth would you want to break that habit? Fix your grammatical errors in the morning. Get your ideas on paper when the Muse wants you. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How much science/medical detail is too much? To a certain extent it will depend on your audience, but I think the answer is not "worry about too much detail" but "worry about making it comprehensible to the lay person." If your story is dependent on real, critical medical details, then you have to include them and make them realistic. But if t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Punctuation issue quoting dialogue Either one is okay. The second one is more emphatic, and I would only put it on a new line if there was a whole speech (that is, not for one sentence). But there's nothing wrong with the punctuation of either. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to get the "back again" part after horrible experience? If you want to write sensitively and authentically about personal trauma, you have pretty much two choices: 1. Endure it yourself. I don't recommend choosing to undergo this. 2. Talk to other people who have endured trauma, or possibly people who counsel trauma victims. Creating a real, rounded c... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Describing big cities and using slang words while writing If you want your story to sound authentic, you must learn and use the slang of the city(ies) in question. The New York Times had a fascinating dialect quiz a few years ago, and the author just put out a book called Speaking American. I haven't read it, but it sounds like a good place for you to star... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Turning normal phrases into gerund phrases: What's the effect in the reader? Gerund phrases describe continuous or ongoing action, or action that happens at the same time as another action. Past-tense verbs generally describe a completed action, or a sequence of actions. > Closing her eyes, she thought about her life. This means that she's thinking at the same time as she c... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |