Posts by Lauren Ipsum
The answer is both, to some degree. Yes, you should always be working harder on your character development. Particularly if you're a beginning writer, you can always work harder on everything, but...
1) I rather like "herding the cats." The idea is that cats are very independent and don't take well to being told what to do, and will scatter and go their own way if forced. You can herd cattle, s...
Do you mean something like Project Gutenberg? You should read the legalese for copyright issues, though.
In the scientific taxonomy of Living Things, you have: Life Domain Kingdom Phylum Class etc. down to Species, and maybe thence to Breed. If I were talking about my neighbor's dog who is half ...
What you need to do is show your introvert to the reader when no other characters are looking, or when he's with people he's close to in some sense. Does your introvert cry when he goes home from...
I found that when I was reading a collection of Grimm's fairytales — just translated, not the bowdlerized Disney versions — a whole bunch of them have nameless characters. The King, The Queen, The ...
While I am not a lawyer, if you purchase a physical CD (bit of a rarity these days, I know) and look at the booklet which has the liner notes, you should see copyright notices for each song. If lyr...
A villain you want to take down is, at his/her core, someone who does not care about the suffering of others. An evil wizard who wants to murder every witch or wizard who isn't a "pureblood," reg...
I cheated once: I pulled a book off my shelf and recreated it (in InDesign, but you might be able to do it in Word). Page size, margins (I used a ruler), font, type size, everything. Once I recreat...
I had a friend who was a substitute elementary teacher who had a similar problem. Granted, he was working with a fourth-grader, but essentially, he sat down with her and line by line they created t...
"Is it okay..." and "Can I..." are subjective. It's about context. Are the sentences grammatically correct? Strictly speaking, no. But you are clearly writing in a first-person, casual, stream-of-...
Find people smarter than you to help you. As an example, Susan Elia MacNeal, the author of the Maggie Hope mysteries, didn't know anything about code-breaking when she started writing books about ...
I concur with Dale; this is so disjointed as to be incoherent. The paragraph needs some context and your sentences need to be simpler and more straightforward.
The best answer I ever heard was from an English professor: "Write as if you're explaining the text to a slightly stupider classmate."
I read recently (I think in a review of CBS's Elementary) that technically every adaption of Sherlock Holmes after Conan Doyle is "fanfiction" in a sense, and it's easy to see that some are really ...
The simplest answer is that there has to be something which bridges the divide between master and slave and allows them to see and respect one another as equals. Does she show mercy to the slave wh...
I think your title is fine as a subtitle or a deck, but it needs something catchier to start with. I Me Ours: A critical examination of individualism, narcissism and collectivism within Faceboo...
You've got the seeds of your answer in your edit. When you write, you're just dumping. Whatever comes to mind, without structure or discipline, and who among us doesn't love the sound of your own v...
I would call it the Lemonade Effect. As in, "when life gives you lemons, make..."
Your best bet is to get some quotes. I realize that sounds like I'm dodging the question, but I'm not. My method, for example, is to work on a manuscript for one hour and use that as gauge to esti...
And I didn't describe actions, dialogues, and settings with much detail. Should I go back and add the details before starting the second draft? I've seen your writing. The answer is yes. :) (A...
I don't think this is sufficient. It's polite, but why would this person share anything with you just because you asked? I think you need to explain who you are, how you found his work, and what y...
Good morning XXX, I wanted to touch base with you about the status of your article for the newsletter. Please advise whether you will be able to send it to me by the end of the week. If it doesn't...
I would find it annoying, or annoyingly convenient, to be switching POVs repeatedly, particularly just for one sentence. I think even when you have an omniscient narrator, you need to stick with ...
You should cite it if it's not your idea. The simplest way would be something like: As Mark Zusak describes it in his novel The Book Thief, Death is he who steals our colors..... You're clear...
