Activity for robertcdayâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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Occupational Hazards to being a Full-Time Writer Every now and again I think to myself how nice it would be to give up my staid life as a Software Developer and start an exciting new career as a Novelist. But then I think to myself that there are surely drawbacks to that path and that I shouldn't leap too boldly into that unknown territory. So, t... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: Is my book too similar to Harry Potter? You can make your tale less similar by changing the characters, plot, location and/or theme but please don't. The world needs more Harry Potter (HP) type books where good triumphs over evil over a long period of time and I hope yours will continue this hallowed tradition. Just about every kind of st... (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? It's essential that you tell us more about the characters or the context in order for us (as readers) to know who to cheer for. Consider a scene ripped from the middle of a(ny) Wolverine story. If we don't know what went before (bad men did very bad things to Wolverine and are threatening to do extr... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How to Win Short-Fiction Writing Competitions I've written many stories and have received some good feedback but have never tried to compete with others. I've been thinking recently that it would be nice to enter a piece of my flash-fiction in one of the many competitions I see advertised. But before I do that, I'd like to try to maximise my cha... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Avoiding Slang whilst Writing I sometime express my personality too much in my more creative fiction. When I get going, I include slang words and phrases that sound fascinating and are comprehensible to me, but may not be interesting or understandable to my readers. I'd hate to think that, to understand what I write, my readers ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Innovative Ways to Provide Background Information Think action movie. Think two heavily-armed men - one chasing the other over rooftops, down through buildings and into the mean streets of a crowded city. Think big guns, explosions and other loud noises. Think danger. Think high-octane thrills. The scene fades, the noise ends and then we are seeing... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How do I know which elements I can use from the work which orginally inspired me? Fan fiction is fiction about characters or settings from an original work of fiction, created by fans of that work rather than by its creator. Therefore, so long as you steer away from using the same characters (or people who would be recognisable as those characters in terms of their appearance, ch... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How does one include non-Latin-based script in an overall English work? Think what you would do the other way around. If the entire book were in Mandarin Chinese and you had an English speaking character - would you print their English in Latin-based script, it would you convert the sounds into Mandarin Chinese script phonetically? I don't know the answer to that questi... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Can I assign actions to broad concepts? Two things: 1. There is a term in Philosophy called Fallacy 2. Philosophers and Creative Writers don't always see eye to eye. To address the first matter: I'm not a professional philosopher, but I'm pretty sure that your teacher has introduced you to one of the fallacies. There's a list of 224 of t... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Writing a Satisfying Ending It strikes me that the last chapter (or so) of any story needs to make the reader feel that reading the book has been a worthwhile experience. An exceptional ending might leave a reader with such a warm glow that they immediately search for more books by the same author. So, my question is: what tec... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Should I take breaks, or focus harder? I often have trouble deciding whether (or how often) to take breaks from writing, or to "double down" and try to write, and try to eliminate anything distracting me from that. I am not looking for unsupported opinion; I'd like to see data, research, personal experience, or well-regarded advice from ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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A: How can someone become a beta reader? my name is Robert and I'm an Beta Reader. This answer is based on my experience. I started cataloguing my books (the ones I owned and those I intended to read) on Goodreads in 2013. Since then I have consistently recorded and reviewed each book that I have read. I had only started reviewing for a sh... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Fiction Writing - has it all been done before? It's a simple fact the there are more fiction books in existence now than one person could possibly read in a lifetime. Add to this the supposition that all plots, themes and genres have been thoroughly explored, and I arrive at the conclusion that no-one need write anything 'new' for a long, long ti... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Sensory Information Overload I'm reading The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith (good stuff if you want to inform the use of emotion in your writing), and I've just come across Overwhelmed (feeling). It talks about the ways in which a surfeit of information in the world can make us feel uncomfortable. This made me thi... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How do I describe an accidental kiss between the two main characters that is romantic as well as regretful? I kissed a close friend of my wife by mistake last year. She was mortified and I must admit that I had mixed feelings of amusement and embarrassment too. But wait - before you go running to tell my wife I should tell you that I already confessed. And it was alright. Here's how it happened. The frien... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Arousing Emotion in Readers Last Christmas my sister bought me a tome called The Book of Human Emotions (by Tiffany Watt Smith). I just started reading it and it got me thinking about how a writer might arouse emotion in a reader (and not in terms of provoking them to throw the book out of the window in disgust). Emotions are ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Disposable Characters I've never seen or read Game of Thrones but I hear that the author is in the habit of killing characters off quite frequently. I have no idea what these particular characters in the series are like (compared to the rest) and so it got me thinking about the differences between characters that a writer... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Mixing humour with horror in fiction I got into trouble last year for submitting an assignment (Masters in Creative Writing) that included a story that sprinkled elements of humour (think Despicable Me) into a gritty and frankly disturbing tale of a homeless man swapping bodies/minds with a teenage girl (think Freaky Friday spiked with ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Restarting a Novel In 2015 I wrote the first two thirds of a novel (as part of NaNoWriMo). I stopped at that point because I had written the 50,000 words required for the 'competition' but the story is not yet complete. I have an outline in my head of how it pans out - so that's not an issue. One problem is that the n... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Rewriting User Guides as Stories I'm increasingly having to write User Guides as part of my job and I need routes to make this into a more interesting exercise. Hence, I was actually looking for something completely different when I started writing this question such as 'can I use humour in technical writing?' but found that this h... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Positive Transformation in the Arc of a Story I'm writing a novel about an obsessive character who is bothering the people around him but just will not or cannot accept that a change must come. When is the most effective time (or if not - the normally accepted time) in the arc of a story to forcibly kill off the ego of the character (in the fir... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Thoroughly Despicable Characters I'm midway through a Masters in Creative Writing. My tutor recently told me (something like): each character deserves a chance to be liked by the reader. I didn't want people to like the particular character I was working on and so it got me to wondering about the circumstances around thoroughly des... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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Characters that take on a life of their own There are definite advantages to writing comprehensive character maps, but one downside that I've found is that when a character is fully fleshed out, she/he tries to take on a life of her/his own and sometimes this can be to the detriment of the story that I have carefully plotted. When a character... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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The psychology of starting a piece of writing I have a problem when it comes to writing (blog posts, stories and novels). It might just be me, but maybe other people have experienced it too? When I come to start writing, my ideas before I sit down seem wonderful. But just recently, as soon as I see that blank page, it seems like all my enthusias... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Question | — |
Plotting a Compelling Story How should I approach plotting a compelling story, i.e. one aimed at changing the way people think and behave (rather than just being "art for art's sake")? I want to write a novel or collection of stories that instil happiness in the reader in a way that makes them want to pass on that feeling (thi... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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How can I make my 'first draft' good enough to be published? One of my bugbears about writing is the editing process. I'd much rather get it right first time, rather than chop this and change that afterwards. Other industries would not tolerate the rather curious approach writers have to the craft. Imagine a car manufacturer saying to their workers 'oh, just ... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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What new plots are available to writers? I read The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker (yes, it was so heavy that I had to cut into two books just to be able to carry it around) and I just can't believe that the number of plots we have available to us has been set in stone and never the more shall be added to. Please - is there some h... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How do you deal with Chapter 2 when Chapter 1 is a volcano opening? The classic approach is to go into the events leading up to the volcano eruption via a 'one year (moth/week/day/hour) earlier' chapter. Make sure that you are not merely describing the events but are enabling the reader to live them with you by means of vivid imagery and realistic dialogue. Make it... (more) |
— | over 6 years ago |
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