Activity for Evil Sparrow
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit | Post #278147 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing challenge #5: Relaxing The end of the school week came as a relief for Megan McAllister, and she was looking forward to going home and doing something fun. She lounged in the back of the car, staring up at the sky and trying to spot shapes in the clouds. The day had begun with such a promising start. They'd arrived at ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #277494 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Question | — |
Which parts of a character's plan should be revealed beforehand? Two characters (one is a PoV character) come up with a plan to break a third out of prison. They succeed, with only minor complications. If I describe too many details of their plan beforehand, it feels like I'm telling the same story twice. If I don't include enough, it looks like they're making ... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #277190 |
Post edited: |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #277190 | Initial revision | — | over 3 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing challenge #4: Cats and dogs (This is a sort of prequel to 2 stories I entered in last year's writing challenges.) Technical Difficulties 0 The ship streaked across the morning sky, spewing smoke. Inside, the pilot clawed at the controls, fighting to keep the ship on course. He could see the landing site – a baseball field... (more) |
— | over 3 years ago |
| Edit | Post #276843 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #276843 |
@Mithical Yeah... I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to think about evil clowns. Especially after dark. (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #276843 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #276843 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing challenge #3: Something new Carlos picked at his macaroni and cheese, trying not to look up at the picture on the wall. Grandma set down her fork and looked at him, frowning. "What's wrong? You liked that the last time you were here." That was last Christmas, when the only clowns in the room were the salt and pepper shake... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #275953 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing Challenge #2: What the thunder said Some managers, Lucy thought, need to have their meeting privileges revoked. She fidgeted and looked at the clock in the corner of her screen: 5:34 PM. The Tuesday afternoon meeting had been scheduled to start at two and run for three hours, as always, and it had run over, as always. There were twe... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #75048 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
How can I make a character sound condescending? In one chapter, the PoV character meets up with her sister. Her sister is supposed to be fairly stuck-up and thinks she's a complete lowlife, so she talks down to her the whole time. I have the PoV character mention her sister's condescending tone, but it feels heavy-handed to me. If I want to mak... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #74941 |
Post edited: |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #74941 | Initial revision | — | almost 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing challenge #1: The great outdoors! Brianna slouched in her seat, staring out the window, the worksheet on her desk forgotten. There were hundreds of things she could think of to do on a beautiful May afternoon, and none of them involved the circumference. Recess had been interrupted by a short but fierce thunderstorm, but now the sun ... (more) |
— | almost 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39485 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39485 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39485 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Writing Challenge: Treasure! - Feb 23 2020 - Mar 22 2020 Welcome to the latest Writing Challenge! In line with the previous one, this includes a topic, a prompt, and also a challenge. - Topic The topic of this challenge is finding treasure. This might be about a dragon's hoard, winning the lottery (or an award), recovering a prized possession... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39467 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39467 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39467 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Writing Challenge: A Long Way Home - Feb 1 2020 - Feb 22 2020 In the last two hours, Stan Woodward had learned to truly hate Christmas carols. Just before the crash he'd been punching the buttons on the radio, trying to find a station that was playing real music. Stan had never been a fan of carols to begin with – boring, sappy tunes with as much life and en... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39435 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39435 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
How can I make a character sound uneducated? Some of my characters have little to no education, and I'm looking for ways to show that through their dialogue. (They're uneducated, but not necessarily stupid.) Here's what I've tried so far: 1. Grammar mistakes. These get obnoxious quickly, so I can't do this too often. 2. Low-level vocabul... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39421 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Questionable Promotions - Writing Challenges The new challenge has been posted here. [1]: https://writing.codidact.com/questions/39420 (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39420 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39420 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Writing Challenge: A Long Way Home - Feb 1 2020 - Feb 22 2020 Welcome to the resurrected (again) Writing Challenge! In line with previous ones, this includes a topic, a prompt, and also a challenge. - Topic The topic of this challenge is a difficult journey home. It could be about someone stuck in traffic, a pet lost in the woods, a traveler stran... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39408 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Questionable Promotions - Writing Challenges I notice we aren't getting a lot of new questions on here yet. Last summer we had a series of writing challenges in Meta, like this one: https://writing.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2127 I'd like to try to bring them back - hopefully, we can get more activity and some new questions this way. Wha... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39290 |
Post edited: |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39290 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
In a dialogue, how can I hint that the characters aren't telling the whole truth? In one scene, I have a conversation between three characters: A, B and C. A's son and B are involved in something illegal. C isn't aware, and since A and B aren't entirely sure she can be trusted, they'd like to keep it that way. The scene is being described from C's PoV (3rd person). C is not us... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39281 |
If your schedule allows, you could try setting your story aside and not looking at it for a few weeks/months. That usually works for me... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #39242 |
It's working now. Thanks for the fast response. :-) (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #39236 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Bug - Unable to Import Content I'm having trouble trying to claim my content. If I go to "Edit Profile", click "Authenticate", and sign in to SE, I get: `redirecturi` is not under the registered domain for this application I get this error on both Chrome and Edge. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug? (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can I hint that my character isn't real? Something about the character's physical appearance doesn't seem quite right. If I recall correctly, the hallucinations in A Beautiful Mind never aged - that's how the MC was eventually able to tell that they weren't real people. You could do something similar, to show that the character is out of t... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How do we end a description properly? The problem with your description doesn't seem to be the word count, but a lack of conflict. Sesquipedalias has the right idea - it feels like you've described something that isn't important to your story. You have a character waving goodbye and drinking his coffee - both ordinary, everyday actions.... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Lost my ‘magic’ concerning characters In my experience, characters generally feel flat and unnatural when they're there to fill a role in the story, instead of being allowed to act like themselves. Meaning, the events are written the way the author wants rather than the way the character wants. The result is a character who is more pupp... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Ending a line of dialogue with "?!": Allowed or obnoxious? A dialogue of mine contains the following sentence: > "You fired all three of them?!" Trouble is, I'm not sure I've ever seen a novel that used a question mark and an exclamation point together - it's something I normally see in comic strips and the like. Is using the two punctuation marks together... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Question | — |
Ambiguous sentences: How to tell when they need fixing? A story of mine has the following sentence: > Alyssa was possessed by a sudden, fierce urge to snatch the teacup out of her sister's hand and dump the contents into her perfectly arranged hair. On further reflection, I realized this sentence is ambiguous: I never said which of the two gets the tea ... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Are there advantages in writing by hand over typing out a story? In my experience, writing by hand is better for brainstorming and first drafts, and typing is better for editing later drafts. I usually work out new ideas on paper - I tend to have a lot of questions for myself right at the beginning. On paper, it's easy to quick scribble a question or note next to... (more) |
— | almost 5 years ago |