Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Is my character an intellectual or detective or both? Sherlock Holmes is famous for deducing answers to puzzles from observation. He was widely and deeply read, although he also deliberately forgot information which he felt wasn't important. He was a detective because the matters brought to him were problems which needed investigating — often crimes, bu... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How much outlining is needed? There is no one answer to this because everyone writes differently. Some people have to outline every beat in every scene; some are complete pantsers. Every book is different too; some stories need a lot of outlining and some fall into place with broad strokes. Move forward, and if you're finding you... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Readability for narrative type with respect to time Option 1 will probably be easiest. Create a Part or Section break and give it a name: Part II, Rivendell, The War. You indicate the passage of time with some kind of identifying text at the beginning of the chapter (Ten Years Later) or within the name itself (After the War), or just have the characte... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How to Introduce Something Potentially Laughable? If you're not telling a humorous story, and your protagonists come across something which looks like it should be funny but ends up being deadly, then you have a Killer Rabbit situation. Bear with me: In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the knights come across the Killer Rabbit in the cave. They pro... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Text structure in a fictional diary It's a diary. It can be arbitrary. It can be long or short, meandering or brisk, organized or all over the place. Do whatever serves your story and your character. The only guidance you might need is to make sure that it's readable. If you're trying to build suspense, then you may need to focus on j... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: What should be covered in a poetry workshop? - The kinds of poetry: blank verse, free verse, structured (limericks/sonnets/haiku etc.) - Rhyme and meter: when they matter, when they don't, when to violate, when Mr. Pritchard should be told to suck pipe - Sounds: beginning/ending, alliteration, repetition, opening/closing and rising/falling vowe... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Using the same name more than once? It makes a huge difference that it's a comic. Seeing the visual cue of how the character is drawn will go 90% of the way towards dispelling any confusion, particularly if we only see child Lais and adult Lace. It is possible to have a written text with similar or identical names and have it be a plo... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Introducing a plot-critical hallucinogen partway through a mystery? My feeling is that you should hint at it, so that it doesn't feel like a deus ex machina, but write your story and show it to some beta readers asking about that in particular. If you hint too strongly, it becomes obvious, but if you don't mention anything about this drug until the protagonist receiv... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it a good practice to add thesis statement to non-academic writing? If you're writing a research report, then yes, you should have "here is the thing we are studying" or "this is the question we are trying to answer" in the introduction of the report. Otherwise the reader won't know what you're reporting on. I don't know if you'd call that a thesis per se. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Italics for both internal monologue and dialog emphasis? yes, it's fine. It's obvious which is which in context. Separately, if you want to emphasize something in internal monologue which is already italics, the usual convention is that the word is in roman/book (that is, the opposite of italic). I have seen bold italic used, but rarely. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Dedication Punctuation - include a period? sure, why not? just don't do the crazy poetry thing and hold the period until the blank page after the About the Author blurb. More seriously, it's a purely aesthetic choice. Use it, leave it out, doesn't matter. (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Partial clauses after semi-colons This is much easier to accept if it's a first-person narrative, because the book is written in your character's voice. Speech/monologue/dialogue is much more forgiving than prose narration. Since these snippets are clearly your narrator "speaking" to the reader, you have a lot of poetic license to be... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: How much can a reader remember? In addition to Mark's excellent advice, I would suggest: 1) Start slowly. In Game of Thrones, we start with just the Starks, and Martin adds on characters a few at a time and lets us live with them for a chapter before bouncing back to someone we already know. Granted that by book 4 you may need to ... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Do you indent a text message at the beginning of a chapter? If your book is going to be published by a traditional publishing house, they'll format it however they like. If your book is going to be self-published, you can format it however you like. Go ahead and break convention for one chapter if you need to. I promise you won't be punished for it. :) (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: When Showing Over Telling Becomes Too Extravagant There's no one right answer, but generally I'd say it's too much when it slows down your narrative and you don't want it to. For example: > John looked through the two windows to see Sherlock standing beside the cabbie. He lifted a long pale hand to his mouth. The cabbie did the same. The pills! Sh... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Finding literary critiques While it might not be "professional," there are about eleventy gazillion words of meta-analysis (shortened to just meta) of the BBC's Sherlock, easily accessible on Tumblr by looking for the appropriate tags. T You can read posts of 100 to 10,000 words by people who are analyzing the use of color in... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Writer's Block: How to Stop World-building and Start Writing? Write your Silmarillion instead. Tolkien created his Elvish languages because he was a professor of linguistics. He created the world of LOTR to have someone to speak his languages. The Silmarillion is the collection of mythology, creation stories, and history which built the world for The Hobbit a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: When dialog is italicized, should the quotation marks be italicized as well? Purely a question of formatting aesthetics. If it's a personal story or you're distributing it, do whatever you like. (I would italicize everything, including the quote marks so they hug the italic text nicely.) If you're being published professionally, the publisher will have its own style guide a... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Do I quote this, italicize, or something else? I think it's author preference. Either of these would be okay: > “Where do you want these?” Jon’s publisher asked, bobbling a box with the word “books” scrawled across the side. > > “Where do you want these?” Jon’s publisher asked, bobbling a box with the word books scrawled across the side. I wou... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Including a company logo in a report If it's a report generated by your company, you may as well put the logo on it. The only reason not to is if it's literally an internal memo, like an email or something, which isn't really being "distributed." If it's a report, with a title and organization and work which went into it, by all means b... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Is it a good idea to thwart everything? Depends. - Do you want a happy ending, or a downer? - Do you want to explore the idea that "winning" or "achieving the goal" can come at too high a price? - Will your protagonist realize that it doesn't profit if s/he gains the whole world, and loses his/her soul? Or will s/he stand cackling amid th... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Comma before names of people or titles Commas in dialogue indicate pauses. So: > “You look after each other, okay, children?" > "I'll have a sparkling water, please, sir." Interrupter commas (I'm sure there's a technical name for this and I've forgotten it — something like restrictive and non-restrictive clauses) are used for clar... (more) |
— | over 7 years ago |
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A: Programs that analyze word frequency? My beloved Scrivener does the job beautifully. Paste your text in and then go under Project —\> Text Statistics and it gives you the list you're looking for. Other people on this board have recommended Word Counter (Mac) and both Primitive Word Counter and yWriter (Windows), but I cannot speak to th... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to write ages and dates in a newspaper article inside a work of fiction If you're "reproducing" a newspaper article in your book, write it exactly as you would an actual newspaper article. That makes it look real, and helps keep the suspension of disbelief for your reader. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: What is the Difference Between yWriter5 and Scrivener? If you're on a Mac, you can't use yWriter. :) Beyond that, from the screenshots it looks like yWriter only allows you to break into chapters, while Scrivener lets you have files in folders with no restraints on organization, as deep as you like, plus photos and audio files. Scrivener has many tools,... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Word count using "Times New Roman" Your font doesn't matter. Publishing industry standard is 250 words per page. From the Editorial Freelancers Association: > The industry standard for a manuscript page, however, is a firm 250 words. This Google Answers thread has some other citations (almost all of which are 404 links, sadly), but... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Preventing spoilers in a short yet interesting synopsis of the story Your description has to be about the setup — the 5% that isn't about the discovery. Or maybe the first 10%, after the initial discovery which gets your protagonist over the threshold of the adventure. The rest will have to be vague puffery about the wonders of discovery, adventure, fantasy, thrills a... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Pitfalls for writing a talkative character? Get everything out in the first draft. Let him ramble on all you like. Put the first draft aside for a month or so. Go back and re-read, and be absolutely ruthless in your culling when re-reading his rambling. If you still can't tell if he's talking too much, hand the ms off to a good beta reader w... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Switching perspectives for a single chapter in a first person POV novel, to do or not to do? Patricia Briggs did almost exactly this in her Mercy Thompson novel Frost Burned. The series overall (this is book 8) is told in the first person from Mercy's POV, but in two chapters Briggs shifts into third person, and the story is told from the perspective of the main character's husband. She labe... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Benefits of Chapter titles in fictional writing? Chapter titles which aren't used as orientation sort of delineate the story: Potions Class, The Quidditch Match, A Long-Expected Party, The Tower of Cirith Ungol. They are a distillation, not even a précis but a suggestion, of what's coming. The question is whether you feel the reader needs this sor... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Why not God as our subject? There are plenty of SFF stories which deal with deities. There's an entire Forgotten Realms (D&D) series about gods being forced to take mortal avatars and walk the earth. The Belgariad pentology by David and Leigh Eddings (and less so the sequel pentology, the Malloreon) heavily features deities as ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Would a redemption story be a coming of age plot It could be both. "Coming of Age" describes how a young person puts aside childish wants and needs and accepts adult responsibilities and priorities. "Redemption" can happen at any age, and describes someone who has done bad things, recognizes that they are bad, and wants to make amends and become ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is there any risk of being published in the wrong genre? "Romance" vs. "fantasy" are significantly different genres. You can absolutely have romance in a fantasy and fantasy in a romance, and you can absolutely write a romantic story in a fantasy setting without the book being a "romance." The differences are in the plot and characters. While I'm not fami... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to become a master at creating wordplays? > Although, I totally understand that experienced ones... do not spend hours thinking up a new pun. How do you know that? Skills take time and practice. Maybe the good writers do spend hours working on puns. If you want to practice at wordplay, you need to think about the meanings of words, and ho... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Do you capitalize the names of governments in a story? Proper names get capitalized. Generic names don't. - Federal Bureau of Sparkly Vampires - Department of Redundancy Department - Imperial Dogwalkers Consortium - The Sacred Order of Turnip Twaddlers - The Church of Saint Spock the Pointy-Eared - The United Provinces of Cumberbatch - the Hiddlestoners... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Advice on portraying my protagonist's anger without making her insufferable Dialogue and monologue. Dialogue with her friends, one by one, until they leave. With a bartender or barista. On a chat room or a BBS. Monologue could be writing in a diary or a blog. Or potentially she monologues at her cat, who will look interested only until she's fed. Whoever the audience is, ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to move back to main section after finishing a sub-section Indentations. 1.1 Main section (starting) Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet 1.1.1 Sub section 1 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet 1.1.2 Sub section 2 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet 1.1.1.a. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet 1.1 Main section (ending) ... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How can I do research about the geographical scenarios of plot? Google Maps is fine for geography, but your question mentions "cultural and political references." If you cannot travel there, you have to find some way to be exposed to and/or interact with the people there. Cities have their own personalities. They have neighborhoods, cliques, sections, classes, e... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Hang on - where's the main conflict? This related answer may help you, but I'll expand more here: I think it was J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Bablyon 5, who wrote that one could sum up "conflict" in three questions: - What does the character want? - What will the character do to get it? - What will someone do to stop the characte... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: A protagonist who knows little about the world he born and grew up in until majority (present)? This is a classic "cabbagehead character," who allows you to gradually unveil your worldbuilding as he leaves his isolation and goes out into the larger community. Nothing wrong with this at all. First example I can think of is Garion from David and Leigh Eddings' pentology The Belgariad (and second... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: For trilogies, is there any order of time periods the story should follow that is considered more appropriate? Most trilogies or series follow chronological order, but there's no requirement. Do whatever serves your story. As long as it's clear to your reader what's happening when in relation to other events, you can present events in whatever order works for you. (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Writing dialogue, present or past tense "said" It doesn't matter how much dialogue you have. If your story (the narration) is in present tense, then all the verbs have to be in present tense. All the dialogue tags, all the narration, everything. The only exception is if you're talking about something which happened in the past relative to the pre... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Writing scenes that involve two languages You're 95% of the way there; you have good instincts for what's readable. • For your first example, I'd try to put as much of the logistics of translation into narration as I could manage. After a bit, the reader will understand that Sally is acting as the intermediate. > "I feel like I've seen you... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Inserting piece of writing into a character's dialogue You've almost got it — you need to add a few more quote marks. You have quote marks for dialogue. In American English that's a double quote ("). When something is quoted within dialogue, you nest single quotes ('). When a person is speaking in paragraphs, you have opening quotes on all paragraphs,... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Are some ideas too cliched? You're fine. There are only so many plots, so go ahead and write the book you want to write because you love it. Remember that there are always new readers coming along who haven't read or seen all the other stories with that plot, so maybe for some people you'll be the first and The Hunger Games wil... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How can the antagonist mislead the readers? Don't name him in his own thoughts. (I'm going to add names here for ease of discussion.) You have: > vengeance was his, Garth of the Bill clan. He was the Foremost of the Forsworn But he's not actually Garth of the Bill clan. That's what he wants his enemy Dave to think. He's actually Wayne of th... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to describe a diverse set of characters without falling into purple prose or exoticism? In looking at your excerpts, and granting for translation, I think the problem is that you start well and then add too much. You don't have to give all the details at once. If this is a person we never see again, secondary details don't matter; if your protagonist is interacting with the character, t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How find an appropriate vocabulary Write for your audience plus a little. If you're writing a book for five-year-olds, you don't want to use "sesquipedalian," but there's nothing wrong with "lengthy." Part of how we expand our vocabularies is by seeing new words in context (and looking them up if we have to). I remember learning guer... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: Is protagonist identification/empathy influenced by the reader's gender? > men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists (the claim being, they can certainly sympathize with male protagonists, but identification is harder). Anecdotally, I would consider the reactions of a percentage of male f... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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A: How to demonstrate an evolution of magic without it seeming like it is improvised? Show a little preview. Pick one thing which is small and easy to do: call Fire. So your character can light a cooking fire. But Fire can be used for a lot of things: a lamp, a furnace, a hot air balloon. Once you have charcoal, you can use that to heat a boiler, which makes steam, and now you have a... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |