Activity for Amadeus
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: Static Scenes that still Move the Story Forward "Conflict" should be present throughout the book on every page, in this sense: the reader wants to know what is about to happen next. Not for the entire book, but they want to read the next three minutes (about three pages) to see something resolved. A "page turner" is precisely that, a weaving of th... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Colloquial speech in pre-modern setting > how do I write colloquial speech, without jarring too-modern colloquialisms? Fictionalize it. Just avoid the clichés that people would recognize; catch-phrases or gestures or accents, give them a twist and present your own. Even then, the general rule in fiction (written or film) is to NOT be too... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How can I really drive home a character not being able to hold it together in the wake of repeated trauma? I think a reasonable response to this scenario is revolt. He kills himself the second they put a weapon in his hand. He refuses to fight at all, if that means he dies, so be it. He makes repeated attempts to kill his masters. He tries to rally his fellow captives to refuse to fight. If threatened wit... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Researching Future Technology for a Science Fiction Novel There are free academic studies to help you learn about the \diffusion of science into common use, both for scientific communities and the public. See, for example, The Diffusion of Scientific Innovations: A Role Typology, or this article The science of diffusion and the spread of public policy If y... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How can you make an unrealistic setup as realistic as possible? Indirect Research. It is difficult to investigate compound events; so break them into two events and invent your way out of the rest. One of your events is amnesia, the other is childbirth. Research the effects of amnesia: It is virtually impossible for anybody to lose two years and think it was a ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: When writing a novel set in Colombia, do you use Spanish for the dialogue? If you use Spanish for the dialogue, the vast majority of readers won't be able to follow it. Any publisher or agent (real ones, not the frauds charging you fees) will read your novel cover to cover and see it. You will limit your audience to bilinguals, which will almost certainly be native Spanish ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: First Chapters protocol It's dangerous. It can be done well, but there is literary danger in beginning with "An Important Scene", as opposed to an unimportant or even forgettable scene. The danger is in the utter lack of audience engagement. Before a novel (or movie) begins, the reader knows nothing about the characters. ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Too Many Goals? You can manage four goals, but they must be useful to the plot. So your overall arc is "growing up", selfish kid to mature adult, along with "coming of age" (sexual maturity). The examples you have chosen are all selfish goals; but have the potential to transform into more altruistic goals. 1) [se... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Making conflicts based on misunderstanding One character cannot explain their actions to the other without admitting a terrible crime, or without endangering the other. You can put even friends on the opposite side of a chasm; for example a reporter and a politician, or army general. A CEO and his son. This would be quite similar to (but di... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: "Too modern" words Spoilers ARE a modern concept. Even as recently as the pre-Industrial revolution; the early 1700's, social life was radically different than what you are accustomed to. I'm not talking about any Puritan notions of sex or nudity, many commoners were quite crude in this respect and had no problem talki... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Occupational Hazards to being a Full-Time Writer I will presume you mean that you can write and get paid for it, and could actually choose a life as a professional writer, without starving. If that is the case (and this answer is tailored to your situation) your problems are quite similar to the problems of a free-lance "gig" programmer; a technic... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How not to give up hope on Scrappy You have your trope (The Scrappy) wrong; the trope you are looking for is called Good Is Not Nice. The Scrappy is disliked and stays disliked and does nothing to redeem himself from being disliked, by characters or fans. The Good is Not Nice is an abrasive, even abusive anti-hero, that in the end w... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Why do most literature magazines take so long (several weeks or months) to respond to submissions despite having only a few hundred subs per month? I would chalk this up to common human nature, and F&SF and Clarkesworld as uncommon expertise and/or resources. On the common side, without being pejorative, what is not punished (financially, legally, or socially) becomes the accepted standard; we humans tend to do what is easiest to do in order to... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to hide a character's identity from the audience? Given Joan of Arc and Loki on the stage, your setting is modern-day magical, you have a 600+ year old woman and a God. The reader will consider it a rip-off, a bait-and-switch if you don't reveal the magical nature of this world early in the first act. It will NOT be "entertaining", it will look like... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to write dialogue for someone who is intelligent but barely speaks the language? Insight. Or, if you're so smart --- Prove It! I think you misunderstand intelligent people, and I wouldn't rely on vocabulary to indicate it in the first place. I am a professor in a university, intelligent by conventional standards, but in my work and in my speech I do not use a complex vocabulary... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to defeat a strategic mastermind without throwing the idiotball? It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you know that ain't so. --Mark Twain. I think the best way to defeat a mastermind is to plant a seed and do it early; no matter how smart somebody is, there can be things they believe to be true that are false. They can be mistaken. They thin... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Can I assume readers will root for my protagonist in a man vs. beast story? I think you must motivate him. For all I know, he is a villain, and you might be trying to save that as a surprise ending -- I've been rooting against one monster that is just following his nature to get a meal, for a worse monster that will destroy many lives! Thus I withhold my sympathy. A charact... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Dead as a point-of-view, how can you write first person narrative if that person is dead? After death experience. IRL many people with stopped hearts or that have clinically died, or been very close to death, report after-death experiences. Floating above their body, hearing (and reporting) conversations and sights it seems impossible for them to have experienced (including since their e... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to make characters more than the words on the page? I agree with Galastel; to the point I almost did not answer! What I can add is that my main characters, perhaps like Harry Potter, have something special about them, a rare talent or natural ability. They are crazy good at something, which may be anything from card tricks to seduction, math to athle... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Mentioning quickly repeated events in first person? I'll agree with Ash, but it depends on the situation. In this one, the events/actions are not a foregone conclusion. If your character is sawing wood or tightening a bolt or having sex or doing anything where repeated action is expected by the reader, detailing the repeated actions gets boring. ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to make a repeating plot "slice" not annoying Ditch the cliché altogether. Stop talking about recovery or pain, stop any worry of the character not recovering, even if they are screaming don't let that affect the other characters. Treat it like humans really would treat such a world, as one in which injuries are temporary and fully recoverable a... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to describe something, that would normally be shown by facial expressions? One mistake early writers make, is writing to directly influence the reader. The minute I say this, the retort is Isn't that the whole point? Yes, but influencing the reader is not the kind of thing you should do directly; you do that indirectly through your characters. So the point in this instance... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What is the difference between method and algorithm? I would say, in plain English, a "method" is an approach to accomplishing something without any guarantee of success. An "algorithm" implies greater accuracy, dealing with well-defined and consistent objects with a greater certainty of reaching a specific goal. The terms are definitely confused in ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Writing Unequal Societies (Without Supporting Inequality) > How can I write a male-dominated culture without implicitly supporting it? As I often say here in Writing, it is important for nearly all of what you write to have consequences, some effect on your characters, their attitude, humor, decisions, emotions, etc. (Some of what you say is to manage or o... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to Win Short-Fiction Writing Competitions Speaking as a professor, I have frequently been a judge (one of five for my field) for our annual poster contest (all sciences) in which students produce a poster describing their research, suitable for an academic conference (often actually accepted for display in such a conference). These typically... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Is it "fair" to hide specific thoughts of a character? I don't think it is fair. Writing the thoughts of several characters in a single scene is generally called "third person omniscient", writing the thoughts of ONE person only is "third person limited"; and that can be done serially with different characters (each chapter is third person limited, only ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Avoiding Slang whilst Writing I don't think you need any resource other than your own intelligence and self-awareness. We know when our slang is not "standard", just don't use it. Plus, it is ephemeral anyway, the 1920's "bees knees" and "flappers" are unintelligible to us now; "copacetic" is a real word made popular in the 1970... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Innovative Ways to Provide Background Information Movies and books are different mediums. With a skillfully engineered scene, a movie director can deliver enormous amounts of information in seconds; a 30 second chase scene tells us all we need to know about good guy & bad guy & setting & time period & character. We don't need their names or a single... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How do I know which elements I can use from the work which orginally inspired me? Don't steal the plot, Don't steal their made-up words or made-up references, don't steal their (imaginative) tech, don't steal their characters or their unique combination of characteristics that make those characters particularly compelling. Yes, you can presume there is some sort of interstellar e... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: In a business novel can characters read real books? > Are their any ramifications of characters reading real books, following real blogs, and using real websites? Could I get into copyright trouble? I am not a lawyer, and this is a question for lawyers; but read this (from a lawyer): Trademark Law and Book Titles. Basically, book titles cannot be co... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How do I stop my writing sounding like a bad imitation of whatever author I've just been reading? Your writing may sound like somebody else's. When I began, I actually analyzed the writing of my favorite authors. Not just for the basics of punctuation; but sentence length and structure. Dialogue that I liked, for example how many words in a sentence? How they used adjectives, and how many, how th... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How do I write a shriek? Inarticulate speech or sounds is an instance where I tell, I do not show. Shriek, Screech, Scream, Howl ... It can help if it startles somebody that comes bursting into the room to protect her, or she wakes up already screaming, if it echoes off the walls, if it pains her throat, if there is some ot... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to control safety nets in discovery writing As a discovery writer, I echo the sentiment that I absolutely control the direction of the story. I personally write with an end in mind; which I record as notes (not prose) about what finally happens; what is revealed, etc. I very much do give my characters personalities and proclivities; whil... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How do I ratchet down expectations in a genre that seems to have gone gonzo? I suppose one alternative is to play it as you yourself found the problem: Start your detective out as a great detective but a novice occult detective, that just stumbled into the whole occult side of things, and naturally knows nothing about it. He is certain it is really occult, due to some instiga... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to write an online screen name in dialogue? This is my opinion; the first option, capcase run together, is preferable. But sites vary, some let you use spaces in your name, some won't let you mix cases, etc. Edit: I skimmed over the fact that 29 is not written out in the user name, I agree with Totumus's comment; it should be used as numbers,... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What should my redraft phase entail? Although I am a fan of King's instruction and I am also a discovery writer, I do not wait before the first draft and the second, for a very specific reason. At the end of the first draft is when I have the most detailed knowledge of my characters, their traits and personalities. I did not have this ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Writing a Good Travel Narrative You have to do both at the same time. Here's the problem with World Building: It is engineering. Whether you are educated as an engineer or not; world building is devising a machine, an ecosystem, that "works" in some sense, is self-sustaining and relatively balanced and stable from year to year, th... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Credibility of using English in non-English-speaking worlds In reality, if you found an ancient scroll written in Old English from a 1000 years ago, it would probably still be unintelligible to the modern person! If you worry about it, I'd give your characters some minor tech, talent, or magic to pave over it; a translator phone app, or a linguist that trans... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: I have characters, no plot Discovery Write. Discovery writing doesn't require a plot, exactly. It does require a problem, undesirable situation, or confrontation to get started; all of these are under the banner of "conflict", and I +1 Galestel for describing how to find some conflict for your characters. I won't repeat that... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: In a branching mystery, should branches be "self-correcting" or follow the impulse of the reader? I haven't ever tried such a thing, so I am speaking from ignorance, but my instinct (for a game) would be one I don't think you have mentioned: lean away from the dominant subplot toward the weakest subplot. If the game isn't for children and it is a mystery, then I'd try to make the player be a reb... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Avoiding Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy Your answer is given by your first trope link; on DIAA, perhaps you have misunderstood it! > The protagonist is incredibly self-centered, an existential nihilist Then why should the reader care about this hero? DIAA is induced by an Evil v. Evil story. It happens when the audience doesn't care wha... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What is the structure and important points to cover in a first chapter? There is no exact definition of "chapter", this is very much up to the author to decide. For myself, I consider it the first chunk of continuous time the reader will see, in the life of the main character (MC). Or fairly continuous; I will still leave out time-consuming bits that slow down the story;... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How to present an alternative without being negative about the other option? I'd say, > Nowadays, there are a variety of ways to reach a mass audience that have been added to the traditional venues like theaters and DVD. For example, social networks and live video streams are viable new choices. (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Transitioning from novel writing to screenwriting? I think transitioning to screenwriting is quite difficult, and it is considerably MORE difficult to break into than novel writing. The competition is greater, the "need to be an insider" angle is very prominent in screenwriting in order to get to pitch, which is its own acting art form to learn. The ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How often should I remind my readers of the setting? +1 Stephane. My own take is that if you are mentioning something like the weather, an emotional state, an article of clothing, a weapon, anything, it should have consequences in the story. So yes, describing winter in your story does have consequences, a forgotten coat creates some hardship, a form ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Can I assign actions to broad concepts? The first approach is accurate, the second approach is wrong: 1a. Science helps us understand nature, vs. 1b. People who do science help us understand nature. Science, in general (I am a scientist) does help us understand nature. But not all people that do science help us understand nature, some ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Writing a Satisfying Ending The hero fought the good fight, as best they could, and that fight is done. To me, for happy or sad endings (of a book or character within a book), and assuming the rest of the book makes the reader love the characters, this is a satisfying ending. I would add, they didn't win/lose because of dumb ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Is it acceptable to use words like "heaven" and "god" when the narrator is agnostic? Yes, agnostics and atheists can do anything they want with religious language! I am another atheist, and a practicing scientist at a university. I don't regard any entity in any religion as real or sacred, and have no problem speaking of them. I know many religious people, including half my extended... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: What makes for a successful resurrection? To me a good resurrection is a good plot twist, meaning the reader could go back and re-read what went before, and see it in a new light and realize the clues for the resurrection were there, they just missed them. Perhaps the best executed twist I've seen was in The Sixth Sense. I immediately watch... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: On copyright infringement and plagiarism It doesn't sound like either to me; if your words are different they are different. Plagiarism is straight up copying text from another writer. Copyright too. Similar ideas are quite common; the notion that nobody can ever write a love story including a bonfire and surreptitiously watching a pretty g... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |