Posts by Lauren Ipsum
NaNoWriMo would never ever work for me, because without the prep work, it's just logorrhea. But if you're trying to use the butt-in-chair time as a motivator, then instead of "when timer dings, sta...
If I'm understanding you correctly, I think what you want are case studies to demonstrate your points. So you put forth one of your arguments — "switching to the individual bucket version reduces ...
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.
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 metap...
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 writi...
"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 bein...
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. ...
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.
There are some good answers here. I'm finding the Snowflake method useful as well.
No, no, no, hell no, frak no, can I get a no from the peanut gallery? oh, and NO. We are not typing on typewriters any more. We are using computers. Word processors, HTML, CSS. Underlining means a...
"Similar plot points" is a little vague. Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Gets Girl Back are "plot points" which have been used since Gilgamesh was a teenager. (ETA and Boy Meets Boy as well, a...
After it's written, and you're polishing, think about vowel sounds. There should be very few words or lines which end on hard consonants (K, T) because you want the sounds and the lines to flow in ...
This is a speech. Uther, whatever his other faults, does give good speech, but so do many modern English speakers. If you want all your characters to speak in speechese — long-winded, complex, win...
First, commas indicate pauses, so put them where a speaker or reader would naturally pause. "Look, Jones," That one is important, because there's always a bit of a pause between a command and...
This is fine with me. You can have just one POV, multiple POVs, you can even have multiple first-person POVs if you really want. (That might leave your reader confused, but that could be what you i...
Hemingway did it in six. "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
I just finished working on a 150-page Corporate Style Guide, so while I can answer this question in great detail if you want, my answer is not for WritersSE, I think. AP and Chicago are mostly ab...
I've seen the citation "(—ed.)" short for "editor," meaning "the editor added this on top of what the author wrote." The format is something like TEXT One of the best-known quotes from Star Trek ...
people those using $feature one (instead of "you") we
I like to use periods with full-sentence bullets, but it depends on the house style of wherever you're submitting your writing. My only caveat is that if you have a list where some items are full s...
@Kate The first time around, I have a nice outline with a logical flow, the second time around, the flow has been lost, and I am interested in knowing the steps and order of steps required to put H...
This sounds like a job for... Scrivener! :D Building on Kate's question: Create your outline. Write each section of your outline as a separate Scrivener document. Label them appropriately. (II...
Hand it off. Find a good editor or beta reader and get someone else's take on it. Reading someone else's comments and suggestions may be enough to unstick your mental block and allow you to see how...
I can offer no evidence, but speaking as a reader, it would make me more likely to purchase a book if I had read and enjoyed the writer's freebies. Because I've already seen the writer's skill, ...
I can think of two suggestions: Have the character sing or quote the verse you're referencing. If you were to have this brainwave in real life, you'd have to explain it to your friends who haven'...
