Posts by Lauren Ipsum
I think you need to consider the context. Is the swearing important or decorative? "James swore under his breath" is not the important part of that scene; the important part is that he can't find ...
I would find this very confusing (I'm in the U.S.). I would expect thoughts to be in italics, not in quotes.
The best translations I've seen (Dante's Commedia, Beowulf) have the original and the translation together. That way you can read what the sense of the text is, but if you want, you have the origin...
Before starting your story, write as much as you need to feel comfortable with the character. That could be pages and pages, or only a paragraph. (For example, the Harry Potter trio were asked to w...
You're getting there. Push it farther. I think your first and last stanzas/poems have the right idea. Be rougher. Be angrier. Don't worry about grammar. Show more images, and have them more raw: fi...
One of my business clients has a similar issue, although not with blog posts. They leave the information in present tense and do not change it after the fact. This sometimes means that they are pos...
To add on to Psicofrenia's excellent answer: Simply put, a writer writes. All the time. If you're not at your desk, you're still writing in your head. The notebook gives you somewhere to put your t...
Treat details like Chekhov's Gun. They should only be there if they serve a purpose. If the purpose is to create atmosphere, explain the setting to the reader for the first time, place a macguffi...
I've read at least one book which successfully did this; the author just titled each chapter "Bruno" and "Melusine," depending on whose perspective it was. The timeline was mostly chronological, al...
I'd say it's erotic if: 1) the sex is a major part of the action (not necessarily the plot) AND 2) the text is explicit enough that if it were a movie, minors couldn't see it. So something whi...
Conflict is fairly simple: Someone wants something. S/He/They cannot get it. What does s/he/they do about it? So your optimistic TECH can be the solution to the problem, rather than the proble...
You can only do this if the entire section is narrated this way. If you are doing the entire chapter/scene/section etc. from the five-year-old's perspective, it will work. What you cannot do is hav...
I'd write it as: "With all these new personalities floating around, it's a shame we can't find one for you." — Holodoc to Tuvok, "Infinite Regress," Star Trek: Voyager I'd find it weird to h...
Assuming native speakers of American English: For first names: John Jack Mary Jane For last names: Doe Smith Jones Johnson Full names: John Doe is native English shorthand for "generic ...
There are almost no rules which have "no exceptions." (Which ones are the "no exceptions" is an exercise left to the student.) Your writing tends to be flowy and lyrical. Tightening it up does ad...
Yes, the paragraph is explicitly comparing Drew Houston to Steve Jobs, in both dress and demeanor. It's an artistic way of dropping in the information. It varies sentence structure, and sometimes...
You already have a rival: Time. Or Circumstance, or whatever your plot complication is which keeps the lovers apart because it's the Wrong Time. Isn't it even more tragic/angsty/yearning that the...
Refer to people the way you think of them. If you think of him as "Alan," refer to him as Alan. If you think of your Japanese friend Goto Sumiko (where Goto is her last name) as "Goto," then use th...
When you have "bullet points," the character you use for the bullet is irrelevant. If you can't mix full sentences and fragments with bullets, you can't mix them with "hyphen points" either. So the...
Well, "productive" and "accomplished" are two different goals, so don't lump them together. If you want to be productive, carve out time to write. Period. Sleep less, give up a hobby, write on you...
Everything in your story should serve your story. The setting, the geography, the era, the culture, the time of day, the weather, the characters, their gender, their names, their descriptions, thei...
If you are both publishing independently, then it doesn't much matter. Write up a contract spelling out everything, you both sign two copies, and Bob's your uncle. Examples of "everything": John...
If your qualification is related to your story, then yes. For example, Mercedes Lackey keeps hawks and horses, both of which feature prominently in her stories. So I know that any details about the...
Yep, works for me. Particularly if this is the literal opening of the story, not just the scene; I like to establish some sort of setting fairly early on. You don't linger too much. You're giving u...
It's dry because there's not much emotion there. You're telling us a lot, but you're not showing us much. You have two instances of her being "puzzled," but the rest is just a description of her mo...
